


Everybody Needs Luck

by mneiai



Series: Melida-Daan [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alderaan, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Asexual Character, BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bogan, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't Like Don't Read, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mandalorian Culture, Melida/Daan, Multi, Naboo Culture and Customs (Star Wars), Non-Chronological, Not Beta Read, Other, Pansexual Character, Politics, Post-War, Protective Mandalorians, Qui-Gon Jinn Bashing, Slavery, Slow Burn, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series References, The Force, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 28,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25124182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mneiai/pseuds/mneiai
Summary: "These people feel like my people. This cause feels like my cause. It calls to me like nothing I've ever felt before." - Obi-Wan Kenobi,The Defenders of the DeadDeath was not the end for Obi-Wan, but neither is becoming one with the Force. Sure his time is up, he lets go...and awakens in a place he'd once, briefly, got to call home.
Relationships: Bant Eerin & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cerasi & Obi-Wan Kenobi & Nield, Cerasi & Satine Kryze, Cerasi/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Nield, Future Cerasi/Satine Kryze, Future Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jango Fett & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Roenni & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Melida-Daan [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823854
Comments: 983
Kudos: 2627
Collections: Anything But Qui-Gon, Favorite Rereads, Jedi Journals, Melida/Daan, all my homies hate qui-gon





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is very fast and loose with what canon (and Legends stuff) will be used. Especially as far as anything where there's some ambiguity over order of events. I've been back to reading some Star Wars fanfic recently and I decided to reread the Jedi Apprentice books and, along with reminding me why I despise Qui-Gon Jinn, I was struck with how utterly weird all the Melida/Daan stuff was in retrospect and got the idea for this.
> 
> I feel like, if I get around to it, I'll probably go back and flesh out the early parts of this more, but that's an "eventually" lol

Obi-Wan felt himself fading deeper into the Force, the attachments he'd kept to the living world unraveling as the last of those he'd had to care for succumbed to a peaceful death. He yearned for peace, to feel united with others beyond just a common cause.

No one had ever told him death could be so lonely, but as Yoda, and Anakin, and all the others that had lingered moved on, Obi-Wan stayed. He'd started this, in a way, and he wished to see it finished.

Until, finally, the last pieces of his consciousness flitted apart, taking all of his yearnings and regrets along with them.

***

Coming awake was unexpected. Obi-Wan laid where he was, unmoving, more from shock than any attempt to go undetected.

The dead did not simply wake up--even when he had first taken the form of a force ghost he hadn't experienced a feeling such as this.

Around him was a body, flesh and bone. It breathed for him instinctively and he could hear the blood rushing in his ears, feel the pulses throbbing throughout him.

His last experiences with a body had been the ache of old, desert-worn joints and the once familiar chill of a ship in space. This was not that, the aches he felt now were from bruising and hunger, but the underlying body seemed healthy...young.

Pushing out with his senses--and the Force responded with the eagerness it had when he was alive--he sensed others around him, but he was the only one awake. When he focused on his physical senses beyond the body, he confirmed that--breathing, snoring, sniffling, the occasional shifting. The sounds of sleep.

Carefully he opened his eyes--the room was a dimly lit, cavernous place. A tomb. He, and the people around him, were mostly lying on the floor, huddled upon thin quilts, under worn blankets and jackets.

His hands were small and, while not without calluses and scars, so much less worn than they'd been even before his self-exile. They were the hands of a child.

And the rest of his body matched.

Now that he'd established basic facts, he was already working through what this could be and...unsure how he felt about it. He'd been dead, now he wasn't. But he had not simply reappeared in the body he had worn in the time he had existed in.

This time, this place, was seared into his mind like few others (like lava and screams, like water rushing around him, like a sunlit throne room). He was a child and so was everyone with him. He was hungry, tired, sore, because they all were, too. The more he thought of this moment in time, the clearer it became, surging over and above his more recent memories, feelings.

Unless the Corellian Hell existed, his only answer was...time travel. He'd been sent back, the mechanics of which he didn't doubt possible after so many years existing after death, but for what reason....

Of all the times and places, of all the mysteries the Force weaved, he could not understand why _Melida/Daan_. He was a child who had left the Jedi order. An insurgent on a powerless planet.

And he was a grown man, a General, a Rebel, who would not sit back and allow these children to suffer just to play to the script of his last time living this.

"Obi-Wan?" Caught off guard, he sat up straighter. "Can't sleep?"

His heart stuttered and he wasn't sure he still had the control of his expressions to keep the power of his joy off of his face. He had somehow not registered before that moment that of course Cerasi would be alive (that she could stay that way, this time). And just the sight of her brought up the old (now current, he was finding) feeling of _connection_ , of a bond connecting the two of them, and Nield as well.

As a thirteen year old padawan distracted by war, Obi-Wan hadn’t given much thought to his instant connection to the two of them. They’d fallen into synch within hours of knowing each other, in a way that he didn’t think he had ever done again, even with the strongest Force bonds.

“Obi-Wan?” her concerned voice pulled him from his musings as he remembered he was once more under the effects of time.

While he had no doubt that the Young, out of all the people he'd allied with, would believe him if he actually admitted to _living an entire life_ , he did not know the ramifications of telling them. And, yet....

"I had...it wasn't a Force vision, it was like...an experience. Of the future."

On his other side, Nield stirred, too light of a sleeper to miss this. Even as the youngest they watched over slept on, the three of them leaned into each other and spoke. Obi-Wan gave the briefest of overview, threaded through with observations made in retrospect, before going into details of these next few weeks. And they made plans. 

Never once did they question the validity of what he said, as so many at the Temple did. Never did they dismiss the Unifying Force's power as Qui-Gon might have, even when he told them of what had happened to them, of what Mawat had done. They could feel the truth in his words, his conviction, and all they could do was share them.

When the day started in earnest he only broke away for a short time, taking one of Cerasi's knives, along with a polished piece of metal, and retreating into one of the unused areas of the tomb. His face in the mirror-like surface was unfamiliar in its youth, yet exactly what he expected. The longer he was in this form, the more normal it felt, the more immediate its concerns were.

That made cutting off his padawan braid all the harder--for while the adult in Obi-Wan knew it did not matter, that decades from now there might be a whole order of Jedi that practiced nothing like the Master-Padawan relationship of the day, he was still connected to it in this time. He'd been terrified of not being a Jedi and then, just when he began to accept that it was not his fate, he'd been thrown into working with Qui-Gon as a team.

Because of Yoda, he now knew. Because Yoda had kept the Masters who might want him from him, hoping he'd heal Qui-Gon, ignoring what that meant for Obi-Wan. How could he have been a good Master to Anakin, when all he knew was desperation and a feeling of never being good enough?

The braid came off and he untwisted it from its knots, letting the strands of hair and beads fall into the tepid water at his feet.

He loved the Jedi, he would always love them, but at this point in time they didn't care for him enough that he could make a difference from within their ranks. Maybe this was a planet of little consequence, but it didn't _have_ to be.

And he'd seen enough child soldiers die to last a thousand lifetimes--he would not just free Melida/Daan from conflict, he would protect it after that, too.

They would survive this. Melida/Daan would know peace, and prosper, and the _galaxy_ would be better for it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your really heartwarming comments! I'm glad I've managed to intrigue people and hope I continue to do so!
> 
> I've added two ship tags I'd been hesitant on adding before, just to give people an idea of what might be coming--I've got a (admittedly very vague) outline of where I want this to go and so these ships are years off for the characters. It felt especially weird tagging Jango/Obi-Wan considering Jango is an adult and Obi-Wan is a thirteen year old lol That's gonna be super slow burn.
> 
> For those who haven't read other works of mine, my chapter lengths tend to vary greatly, as I'm more a person who believes in getting ideas out into the world than trying to fill up a certain amount of space. As I said first chapter, I may eventually do some rewrites of this to flesh certain things out more, but no guarantee lol
> 
> I have ended up with a few other ideas as I try to come up with a Melida/Daan culture, so may be doing some one-shots with Melida/Daan!Obi-Wan.

Having foreknowledge of events and people (of betrayals, and failures, and the tension points that had cracked the vision of Nield-Cerasi-Obi-Wan as one person in three bodies for the Young), they gained control even faster than the last time Obi-Wan had lived through the war. Better yet, with his knowledge of warfare (his _experience_ , it resulted in even less loss of life. 

They had been on the brink of destroying the spaceport, but now Obi-Wan had better ideas for that. Because while they’d done it, and survived, and it had won them the war--it seemed a waste. This time they didn’t blow it up, this time they stole it. A distraction off to one side, Obi-Wan shielding them from detection with the Force, and the very brief instructions of how to fly from Roenni and Obi-Wan just enough to get them off the ground and out to a field that the Scavenger Young controlled.

No death, not even among the Elders, and far greater humiliation than the last time. He took some pleasure in that, in hurting these adults who would murder children so easily, though even that wasn’t the Jedi way.

***

The transition in power was as smooth as it could be.

Their government was more structured, included representatives of the Middle Generation, and even created a (less powerful) set of positions for Elders to have some sort of representation. At the head was not one governor, though, but a triad--a Melida in Cerasi, a Daan in Nield, and Obi-Wan, who was neither (and both) to balance things out.

They did not argue in public, not even just in the council’s present. Obi-Wan had told them of how others had used their disagreements against them and they both chose a more extreme route of just making sure it never happened. He didn't know how long that would last, but they had a system for tabling votes until they'd privately discussed them, which was enough for the early days.

The three of them had fit together from the moment they met, falling into an easy pattern, and despite the decades in between for Obi-Wan, he still slotted back into their trio with ease. The Force meant for this to happen. Maybe had always wanted him to stay here, but his own doubts, his disconnect from the Force the moment he'd broken ties with Qui-Gon and felt he was no longer a Jedi, had made it impossible for him to realize that.

He'd thought he was meant to be a Jedi, but now he saw that being a Jedi in the way the Jedi were now hadn't helped anything, that he'd been as ignorant as all the others before his death. There was a rot at the core of the Order that had helped guide them towards their destruction.

Maybe that's the real reason he was sent back.

***  
He did not let himself think of what was happening at the Temple. Nield carefully kept all Jedi news from him, knowing the unwanted distraction it would be.

***

The separation of powers was easy with the three of them alive and united.

Nield handled the governmental affairs, arranging infrastructure with an ease that the adult in Obi-Wan couldn't help but find impressive. Of course, he had led the Young for years, and was well-versed in how his people's minds worked (when he wasn't feeling betrayed). 

He’d been warned that the focus on the Halls of Evidence would not work out the way he wanted, but was still having a hard time dealing with those facts. 

“As long as the Halls of Evidence exist, there will be Melida and Daan learning to hate,” Nield argued with them in private.

“They are _our_ dead, even if they died for awful reasons. The Halls can go, we all agree to that, but the holos shouldn’t be destroyed _with_ them.” Cerasi felt strongly about it, knowing what had happened before. “A museum for them, so they still exist, so their relatives can still see them.”

That earned a scoff. “Can still see their calls for violence?”

“They are just holos,” Obi-Wan pointed out, invested-and-not in the debate. “They can be edited.”

His two counterparts sat back, contemplating that.

They had volunteers to edit the worst of the propaganda out of the holos within the day, deciding that the originals would only be available to scholars and government officials. Let people see their loved ones, but not be encouraged to revolt.

Cerasi, meanwhile, focused on humanitarian efforts, getting shelter, food, and med supplies to everyone who needed it. Making sure, as the days grew colder, that their people would have the means to stay warm. 

She spoke often with her (still stubborn) father and defused a handful of situations with the Elders that could have ended in disaster. Knowing how her death affected him seemed to open her heart more to him and he, in turn, could not resist having her back in his life.

***

"Symbolism works on the Melida and Daan," Cerasi pointed out. "Even if changing one character might seem silly to the universe at large, it has meaning here."

The governing council was still half in-love with Cerasi (Nield and Obi-Wan among them), so while they might feel they had more important things to vote on, soon they were all agreeing to a name change.

Melida/Daan officially requested a change of name in the Senate for the first time that wasn't an attempt to push just Melida or just Daan. Instead, it was Melida-Daan.

"Together, not divided."

***

Obi-Wan had to look outward, to the galaxy beyond them, to help their people survive. That was his role within the governing triad, defense and diplomacy, just as it had been a position for so much of his last life.

His first act, once they were secure enough to think beyond just the next day, was to look into what resources they had. Most of their ships had been destroyed, most of their infrastructure as well, their parks and the land outside the city razed. 

It was only as they spoke of getting rid of the Halls that he realized they had one potential export--the smooth black rock they used for those buildings was valued on many planets. From there they realized, to their great amusement, that many of the old weapons they’d collected and placed in a vault were considered antiques, a few going for shocking prices on intergalactic auction platforms.

His second act was to contact planets he thought would offer help while also not demeaning the three of them and most of their cabinet for their ages--thirteen and fourteen was only considered “adult” in a handful of human societies.

"Why would they help us? No one has, before."

"They didn't help the Elders possibly because they knew there would be another war no matter what they did. But we're actually working on rebuilding, now, and we'll be reaching out to most of them for help with nothing involving weapons."

They thought that over, then agreed, and together (though with Obi-Wan doing much of the work) they came up with who to contact and sent out messages with the three of them formally making Melida-Daan's request.

Naboo was the first of the planets to offer diplomatic talks, requesting a representative be sent. He’d known they would (or hoped they would) and he was gladdened by it more than he wanted to admit.

Of course, there was only one person that the council thought should take up the position of ambassador for these talks. Obi-Wan didn't want to leave the still unstable planet, the war had only ended a few months prior, but even those who didn't know his unique situation pushed for him to represent them.

"You're the only one of us who has even been off-world!" Nena finally shouted down his protests, looking ready to strap him to fighter and find a way to fly the ship herself all the way to Naboo. "You were training for this sort of thing, you're the only one that makes sense."

Nield radiated smugness as he stood, "All those in favor of making Obi-Wan our official ambassador?"

Of course he was the only one to vote against himself.

He came back later that day to the hollowed out hall they were using as his offices to find the place taken over by Cerasi and a group of the Young, spotted with a few older Melida-Daan. All of them hunched over fabric...sewing.

A Middle Generation woman (Taun's aunt, his mind finally supplied, when he realized he recognized her somehow), stood up with a chord in hand as soon as she saw him. "Get over here, we need your measurements."

"My...what?"

"Adili suggested it," Cerasi came up to help the woman, Adili, manhandle him to a clear spot in the room. "She's been studying the older holos of our dead and what other pictures she can find, working on--"

"Traditional clothing for Melida-Daan. All these planets you talk to have...really amazing fashion. We can't just send you out there looking like," she didn't need to finish, just waved her hands at him and everyone knew what she meant.

He was still in his torn, worn Jedi robes, but only for warmth. Underneath he was wearing black pants long faded to grey he'd gotten out of the communal clothing storage. They'd been repaired so many times even before he'd gotten them that the patches almost looked purposefully done. Along with a sweat-stained (though carefully washed) undershirt, he didn’t paint a very good picture.

"And he needs a haircut!" One of the Young (a complete traitor, though not wrong) added from the group.

Grimacing, he let them subdue him. They didn't have the resources for anything to match the Naboo fashions, but what Adili and the others had come up with was actually not bad. Utilitarian in a way that made him carefully not think of the Empire, but with odd little flares of life that had come from Melida and Daan history, back when they still had the time to worry about fashion.

By the time he left, he had a full wardrobe of handmade clothing that anyone who didn't know how poor Melida-Daan was would think was a luxury. And it did make him feel more confident, the part of him still a teenage boy who cared about appearances and embarrassment less of an issue.

***

Cerasi and Nield saw him off. They’d said their private goodbyes the night before, going over and over what Obi-Wan remembered just in case something might come up. But here, in front of the cruiser sent by the Naboo to take him and the five Melida-Daan he chose to accompany him, they made another show of unity for their people.

Hands held up, palms facing but not quite touching, they paused for a moment in silence.

“Good luck,” Nield said, finally, as they broke apart.

Obi-Wan scoffed. “I don’t need luck.”

“Everybody needs luck.”

It was Cerasi, not Obi-Wan, who finished their now-traditional refrain, eyes bright and face solemn. “Not us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I forgot to mention it in my notes last chapter, but the "everybody needs luck" phrase is part of a line of dialogue repeated multiple times in the two Melida/Daan books, like an in-joke.
> 
> For the fashion, I'm thinking something along the lines of a plain-ish sherwani/achkan/zupan type outerlayer, with the side buttons that make it look like a long military coat? and in plainer colors because they aren't doing a ton of cloth dyeing or embroidery considering. Star Wars fashion, at least in the first 6 episodes, tends to go for length in garments.
> 
> Also, I wanted to add, since it was confusing some people--during and after the Melida/Daan books a lot of awful stuff is going down at the Temple, that's what Obi-Wan is referring to by not wanting to know what's up with the Jedi.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I created a [tumblr (melida-daan)](https://melida-daan.tumblr.com) to collect all my worldbuilding and also put in some of the canon, since Jedi Apprentice isn't really well-known. I haven't put much on it, yet, but thought I'd just get it out there. I may put stuff like deleted scenes and section drafts up there, too.
> 
> Also, I should probably say, these chapters aren't totally in chronological order, some of the parts happen at the same time or before/after other parts.

He might not have visited Naboo until a decade later, but he could see very little would change in that time. After landing in a diplomatic hanger he was brought before Queen Ekay, a monarch he knew only from vague stories Padme had once told.

She was older than Padme had been, at eighteen she was one of the older monarchs of recent years, though already starting on her second term. Her age didn't stop her, or any of the Naboo, from treating Obi-Wan and his people like fully realized individuals.

The Melida-Daan with him soaked it up, many latching onto the adult representatives who showed them respect and care--something they'd never gotten from Elders before. 

He’d chosen his retinue not necessarily by who he thought were the best representation of Melida-Daan, but by who he thought he could teach etiquette to the fastest and actually have it followed. So far, he hadn’t had any issues come up.

Not that the Naboo could say much against them. As one of the rulers of Melida-Daan, Obi-Wan was technically of equal rank (if not equal power and wealth) to the Queen and his retinue had that, along with diplomatic status, to protect them. 

It was an odd position for him, after spending so long as a Jedi, who had a sort of ambiguous status wherever he went, and a General, who outranked nearly everyone in the military but was still at the beck and call of the Senate and many planetary leaders. Having political power so easily (if winning the civil war could be called “easy”) almost seemed like cheating.

***

They started with a state dinner, more food than the Melida-Daan with Obi-Wan had ever seen at one time. He didn’t scold them for their exclamations, didn’t try to enforce any of the etiquette lessons he’d instilled on them at the table, because he wanted the Naboo to see--to look at them, their hollow cheeks, their stunted growth, and feel something like guilt for their abundance.

It was cruel, but it was politics, and Obi-Wan was willing to be far beyond cruel to protect his new home and its people.

After that, there were formal talks, hours upon hours of drawing up plans, writing out details. The others would fall asleep, sometimes wonder off, and Obi-Wan stayed focused, drawing on the patience he’d learned in exile and dead, using the Force to keep himself awake and alert, until the Naboo started to flag and would have to call it a day.

Nena, an expert at eavesdropping, found the reactions to him hilarious. “They’re all caught up in romantic ideals, they think you’re some sort of hero from their old stories,” she huffed at him in the mornings, when they all took breakfast in the suite he’d been given. “The never-tiring boy who sacrificed everything and more for a cause.”

“That’s a good thing,” Kima stated, from where she was trying to get Joli’s clothing in order. “I saw it enough during the wars, making people larger than life has value.” She was old enough to have fought in the few wars, to have lost a daughter to a bombing and just...given up until the Young won and gave her something like hope. “But you’ll also have to be careful, Obi-Wan, you can lose their regard quicker than you gain it.”

He huffed, nodding. “Don’t worry, I’m well aware of that. We’re only set to be here for as long as it takes to barter this agreement, I can hold on until then.”

***

While he, and his companions, would prefer to spend everyday and all day on their planning, the Naboo insisted on breaks. They toured the countryside, spent an afternoon at a beautiful lakeside beach, and frequented the streets of Theed. Other children, especially those in the Legislative Youth Program, were encouraged to interact with them.

One of them was even a Naberrie, a cousin to baby Padme. Obi-Wan spent more time than he should have in his presence, creating a connection that would hopefully include messages over the next few years so that he could keep track of the future Queen. The others, taking his lead once he mentioned how much they could learn, went out of their ways to try to befriend the children.

He even caught Kima making out with one of the other twenty-something politicians in a side room one night and realized that he wasn’t the only one playing with the romanticism of the Naboo.

***

"Most in the galaxy would see what you did as impossible, Ambassador. We Naboo know it is not. But it is difficult." Ekay liked to walk with Obi-Wan in her private gardens in the morning, twisting through the well-maintained hedge mazes as her security scouted around them.

He gave a wry smile, thinking his eyes must look much older than they should at the moment. "We've got the hard part out of the way, your majesty, just a few months ago the Melida and Daan Elders couldn't be trusted together for more than a few minutes. Even when there was peace in the past, the two sides weren't working together the way we are, now."

"But you need to be able to keep the population healthy and happy."

"Yes, we're low on...everything but weapons. The Elders didn't care about infrastructure, they didn't care about feeding people or keeping them warm in the winter months--which we’re now in. Anything we have is incidental or kept up just so the fighting could continue."

He was possibly being too harsh, he knew there'd been farming, textile manufacturing, other industries, but in the wake of the last civil war it all seemed far too little.

"And that is what you need from us?"

Turning to face her, he put on one of the expressions he'd been practicing in the mirror--a truly child-like look of need and hope that when coming from Anakin had always had him caving despite himself.

"We need not just food, your majesty, but the means of growing it ourselves, of reclaiming our farmlands lost in the war. Your water filtration systems are known to be some of the best in the galaxy and those, too, we would be grateful for in any small number you could part with them.”

“Ambassador,” Ekay laid her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him, but never looking _down_ at any of them. “You ask so little of those of us that have so much. What we will give may be charity, but that does not make you a beggar. Push for more and I will see it granted.”

Obi-Wan felt an ache in his heart for all that would happen to this planet, all that he wished to protect it from, if he could.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of you were waiting on this haha

The second major government to accept their overtures was more of a stretch--Obi-Wan knew that the Great Clan Wars were about to erupt in Mandalore space, a powder keg waiting for any shift in power, but he also knew they were the best chance at improving Melida-Daan's security.

"They have a rite of passage at thirteen, anyone who passes it is considered an adult."

Nield huffed. "Winning a civil war has to count, right?"

"For the Mandalorians? Definitely."

"I don't know...isn't this just inviting more war? How can we avoid conflict, if we train towards it? If we arm everyone?" 

Cerasi was looking through basic information on Mandalore, knowing little about it from the lack of formal education among the Melida and Daan. Obi-Wan could guess the sorts of information she was finding.

He remembered when she'd forsaken weapons in the last life, refusing to ever pick one up again. Satine had reminded him so much of her, just a few years later, and now that he was back he found himself wondering if that was where his initial feelings had been rooted. It had only made Satine's death all the worse.

"They're a warrior culture, and they have their own issues with civil war, but they know what they're doing when it comes to fighting. The training should act as an outlet for a lot of our more aggressive people and...we may need help against others, off-worlders."

She frowned at him. "You think we'll have to fight again?"

"I think we're a planet that's poor, with little infrastructure, and an inexperienced ruling body. If we can't defend ourselves, we'll be taken advantage of. It will also help that being friendly with Mandalore will make people think twice about the cost of attacking us."

Except he didn't just reach out to the greater clans of Mandalore, he reached out to the Manda'lor. He could only hope their request might come before the contract that brought the True Mandalorians into the trap on Galidraan.

***

The Young had some plastoid armor, which they dressed the older and larger children in, the ones who were nearer to adult size. The rest of them were in piecemeal outfits made more for the guerilla tactics that had won them their peace than for outright fighting.

Even Obi-Wan, though, was strapped with a vibro knife and smaller blades, a blaster at his side. The Melida-Daan would not look impressive to the True Mandalorians that had answered their call, but they would look like the survivors they were.

The ships that landed made everyone uncomfortable, bristling with weapons excessive even for a transport but that Obi-Wan had expected. Death Watch was still at large and all of the people in those transports would have lost family or friends to them.

Less, though, than in the last life. At least a hundred warriors had taken a contract to protect and train the people of Melida-Daan, they weren't all walking into a trap. And the first to descend had an unforgettable Force presence, even without the clawing need for vengeance he'd carried about him in the last life.

Obi-Wan felt one of the many, many weights on his shoulders lift.

"Mand’alor Fett, welcome to Melida-Daan."

***

They didn’t have to fear the Mandalorians not taking them seriously, what they did have to fear was them trying to _adopt_ them. Adorable little warrior orphans seemed to be their weakness. It was flattering, and some of the youngest among them were probably going to accept, but most of the Young had fought too hard to start building what Melida-Daan would be to give it up for another culture.

In the dark of the night, sleeping in an actual bed in an actual house that the triad had finally been convinced to live in, Obi-Wan fantasized about it. Some of the people he’d loved most had been Mandalorians. And he didn’t think he’d be bad at it, not now.

But if he was meant to be that, he thought the Force would have sent him back later, to Satine’s arms, not Cerasi and Nield’s.

***

“They say you were a _jetii_.”

Obi-Wan had wanted to avoid Fett’s notice, but he knew that was a ridiculous desire. They were both parts of a government that was allied, if only by the loose ties of temporary contracts at this point.

“I was.”

He continued through the movements they’d been instructed to follow, breaking down a blaster and reassembling it over and over until it felt like second nature. That had distracted him, not because of the difficulty, but because he was reminded again of how different his body was--his hands had yet to cramp, the fatigue of a long day was barely registering.

Fett sat down on the bench beside him, studying him. “There is no shame in leaving them.”

Rolling his eyes--something he had once learned to suppress but was too easy to do now--Obi-Wan stopped his task and turned his attention fully onto the Mand’alor. “I know that. This has felt like the right choice since before I made it. Melida-Daan needed help, the Republic, the Jedi, refused to give it. So I did.”

The smile Fett gave him reminded Obi-Wan that even though thirteen was adulthood to the Mandalorians, that didn’t stop them from seeing precocious children in them.

After that, somehow, he became Fett’s favorite in the government, to Obi-Wan’s consternation. The awkwardness of pretending to be only just learning his language offset only by the little flame of anger that would never snuff out from wondering where these paternal instincts were when the clones were being created.

***

As a thirty-five year old, he had acknowledged that Jango Fett was an attractive man (half of that was the danger around him, the knowledge that this was a Jedi-Killer who he couldn't even resent for that fact). As a fourteen year old, he was doing all he could not to blush in his presence.

Which was...mortifying, but had done more to get the Mandalorians to accept an ex-Jedi than all of his words. When the others had found out who--what--he was, there'd been a tension that had at first surprised Obi-Wan, until he remembered that even without Galidraan, they had a long history to give them reasons to dislike Force users.

He was a Jedi no longer (had lived an entire life, and more, as a Jedi, and felt no real guilt now for leaving them, his memories too mixed with his present-day self's)--he was a citizen, and representative, of Melida-Daan. He’d given up his other titles, dropped his hollow family name somewhere along the way, and was proud of it all.

But he also didn’t hold back on the spars nearly as much as he should, if he wanted to hide himself. If a few of the Mandalorians who were exceptionally rude to the _jetii_ in their midst ended up with extra bruises, no one around him was going to blame him.

***

“It’s not the weapons that cause the wars,” Cerasi mused, after coming back from a day of training.

They didn’t train together, so two of them were always working, but in truth all of them would prefer being yelled at by some Mandalorian commando to the paperwork they now had to deal with.

Nield grumbled something, before burying himself back in the covers beside Obi-Wan. “He said if you’re going to get philosophical, it needs to wait until breakfast.”

Huffing, she gave her agreement in the form of climbing in with them, cuddling her smaller body between theirs. Her contentment hummed in the Force and sang Obi-Wan to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put together a [semi-canon timeline](https://melida-daan.tumblr.com/post/623140850968543232/canon-ish-timeline) for relevant events, but the main point is that 44 BBY, which is when a ton of shit is happening to Obi-Wan including Melida/Daan, is also the year that Death Watch manipulates the Jedi into nearly annihilating the True Mandalorians and Jango gets sold into slavery.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that I made [melida-daan.tumblr.com](https://melida-daan.tumblr.com/) for info and eventual greater headcanons and whatnot. My main tumblr is [manyangledone](https://manyangledone.tumblr.com).
> 
> So I only have about 7 chapters written for this but I already have an AU of this AU idea where after around the events in this chapter, Obi-Wan ends up going back to the Jedi to have someone in the inside lol I may post the bit I have so far up as a drabble.

Alderaan, always thinking of the efforts others had to put forth, did not ask for any representative to visit their planet and instead sent many of their own to Melida-Daan. Their humanitarian efforts were well-known, no one blinking an eye at a request for their assistance. Beyond that, Obi-Wan ached for a little more familiarity with his last life when so much had changed so quickly in this one.

Their people worked together to open up schools and medical centers, the Naboo joining them when they realized what they were doing, an easy alliance of ideals forged that hadn't existed until much later in Obi-Wan's last life.

It was as they worked through training programs with Roenni beside him, as head of the Education Squad, that he started another plan that had been simmering in the back of his mind.

"We have the land, or we will soon, and we'll have the infrastructure...but even if we aren't going to have most of the Young busy with education, we don't have the population."

The Middle Generation was so small after the last few civil wars, the Elders that remained weak and needing long-term medical care (none of the Young had revealed just how many of the Elders they'd had to execute to ensure peace, none of these foreign dignitaries ever thought they could have). 

"Would you accept settlers?" the man who asked, Pablus, was a minor member of House Antilles whom Obi-Wan had never met in his last life.

"If we take too many Elders, they might try to take power," Roenni warned, giving Obi-Wan the opening he needed.

He made a show of thinking it through, eyes narrowed at a crumbling wall across from him, barely supported by planks of wood and ingenuity. "What if we take people without outside power?"

"Like?"

Looking back over at the Alderaanian prince, Obi-Wan started to grin, the expression so much easier on his young face. "We're rebuilding a whole society, trying to rectify our own wrongs, but there's a whole galaxy out there of people in need. How do we let them know that Melida-Daan is open to them? That freed slaves can settle here and be welcomed citizens?"

That might have derailed them from the agenda, but none of them cared. The passion that erupted in the room rolled over Obi-Wan and pushed him all the farther, his own energy seeping out into the people around him. By dawn the next day they were sitting on the floor, the Queens joining them long distance and half the rest of the aid workers and not a few of the Mandalorians piled around going over the details.

Perhaps part of Obi-Wan's motivation was guilt, at not doing enough for Anakin, or the clones. But Cerasi and Nield had both loved the idea and he knew it was a good thing, no matter the reason.

***

Freed slaves trickled in as Alderaan's network started to let their informants know of the new safe haven. Sometimes it was one or two, long free but still untethered. Sometimes it was a hundred, two hundred, found on a liberated ship or freed when the Republic shutdown some illegal enterprise that they happened to be in.

None of them were Shmi Skywalker, though Obi-Wan hadn't truly expected them to be.

In this time, he himself wasn't too long free from his brush with slavery, the memories dredged up in his mind every time he saw the scars from collars around someone's neck. Many of them seemed to guess at it, as if he wore it like a shroud around himself, and he pushed away his shame. He knew they would not judge him for the short experience he had, he should not judge himself.

He couldn’t spend as much time with them as he wanted to, but he knew they would be taken care of. Cerasi had taken control of the situation so that he could continue with his greater plots and gave him details whenever she could. It had to be enough, even though it would never be enough.

***

Their newest alliance reminded Obi-Wan how he missed Bail, who he had known so well in the last life, and Leia, who he had not known nearly as well as he wished. When he mentioned it one night to Nield and Cerasi, Nield had threatened him with a position in the Senate.

In horror, he realized that the joke was honestly making them consider it, and made a mental note to find people to fill those roles immediately.


	6. Chapter 6

In his teens, Obi-Wan thought he knew what made a perfect Jedi and thought he'd been a failure, barely scraping by. As an adult, he'd questioned some of that, outside the influence of his Master's constant criticism, but he'd still done his best to outwardly project what he thought a Jedi should be. He'd assumed everyone had known it for the lie it was, but apparently the one person who needed that knowledge most never had.

Long days on Tatooine and glimpses of Luke had solidified what he'd wondered: He had been so focused on what made someone a good Jedi, according to the Council, that he'd destroyed those around him in casual disregard. 

What a Jedi should be was love, and determination, and an iron will not built upon false notions of serenity, but upon the need to protect and cherish life. A Jedi was an untrained moisture farmer saving a stranger because it was the right thing to do. A princess without a planet who ruled as much from her heart as her mind. An abandoned girl refusing to let anyone else feel unwanted.

It was sacrilege, in this time, to think such things. Even the age at which Luke and Rey started training would have completely disqualified them, Anakin too old at nine despite blazing like Tatooine's twin suns in the Force.

On Melida-Daan, there were no Temple Jedis, and it was Obi-Wan who followed the Force to each citizen with even the slightest hint of potential. 

They started with meditation, something anyone could do. Taking the idea from the Mandalorians, for those who could not sit still they did slow and precise movements of stretching and fighting. That seemed to go over best with them, unsurprisingly. The Melida-Daan had only ever known fighting and the former slaves devoured the knowledge of how to protect themselves.

He tried to teach everyone techniques to shield their minds and the most force sensitive he gave creche games as training until they were ready to do more. 

Cerasi and Nield joined them, even, sometimes, and while they had no Force Sensitivity of their own, Obi-Wan was training them to feel the edges of their unexpected bond, to utilize the Force through Obi-Wan's own abilities. After a few months, they could not affect the physical world, but Nield was starting to feel the truth or lies in people's words and Cerasi had feelings, sometimes, like the slightest hint of Obi-Wan's precognition.

***

With everything that had happened for the Order in his last life, Obi-Wan was not surprised it took them so long to send a representative.

He wasn't even surprised it was Qui-Gon Jinn, suspecting Yoda's hand in that.

Cerasi and Nield did not allow him to be alone with the Jedi, much to Qui-Gon's mounting frustration. At some point, word must have reached the Mandalorians, too, because suddenly along with always having one of the Young with him, he also always had one of them.

More often than not, it was Jango, lounging nearby and Obi-Wan could swear he heard the Force _screaming_ “danger” at Qui-Gon every time he got too close to Obi-Wan. Even with the _buy’ce_ hiding his face, his glaring was obvious.

“You’ve accomplished much here, Padawan, but it’s far past time for you to return home.”

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth. “I am home.”

He missed the long, wide sleeves of his robes, where he could ball up his hands into fists and no one could see. He’d loved Qui-Gon the way an abused akk dog loved its owner. All he’d wanted was his approval, his praise. 

Qui-Gon hadn’t lived long enough, in the last life, to ever realize how much he’d broken his third apprentice. Some of his friends would say Qui-Gon would have _never_ realized.

“Your home is among the Jedi.”

The spike in Jango’s hostility helped center Obi-Wan more than any meditation. It was a reminder of everything he’d accomplished, both for Melida-Daan and for the timeline.

“No, it’s not. And if the Council had sent me to the ExplorCorps instead of the AgriCorps, I wouldn’t have even protested leaving.” Not entirely the truth, but not entirely a lie, either. “I have friends there, who I will hopefully be in contact with again someday, but my _family_ is here.”

“Obi-Wan--”

“Archon.” Obi-Wan held back a sigh at Qui-Gon’s incredulous stare. “We informed you, Master Jedi, of the titles of the Ruling Three of Melida-Daan. You are also free to address Archon Cerasi, Archon Nield, and I as ‘your grace,’ if that suits you more.”

As much as he didn’t want another title, when dealing with offworlders they needed such formalities. They’d dug it up out of old holos, like so many of the rare glimpses of Melida and Daan culture, and decided it suited them better than trying to work around “governor” for three people.

“This isn’t...you can’t honestly mean to _stay_ here! It’s been months already!”

“When did you start to miss me, Master Jedi? I doubt it was when you first returned. Or for weeks after that. Was it when you could no longer dodge the questions of where I was? When others mourned my loss? When your grandmaster scolded you for failing his plans again?”

Qui-Gon didn’t know what to do with an Obi-Wan who was both assertive and informed, anymore than he ever had. 

“We do not require a Jedi presence on Melida-Daan. As an official ruler of this government, I ask you to depart immediately and inform the Council that we will accept no others.”

He strode to the door with a confidence his teenage self couldn’t have felt. Through the Force he felt Qui-Gon move to follow him and Jango step between them, keeping him inside until Obi-Wan could make his escape.

Later, Jango would pat him on the head in passing, but not speak of it. Somehow, though, half a dozen of his people would be there at dinner to eat with Obi-Wan and keep him distracted with hilarious stories from their exploits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a lot of time going back and forth over titles for Nield, Obi-Wan, and Cerasi and almost just decided to either not give them titles and have them enjoy watching others flounder or just going with “triumvir” or something like that. But after considering it, I decided to do “archon” as it has both been used for three co-rulers with a division of concerns (in Athens) and is used in some variation in scifi a lot but isn’t really popular in Star Wars for some reason.


	7. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the comments! This is a short chapter, but I wanted to address some of the things that have come up multiple times in the comments in one place lol
> 
>   * There are events, and people, and places that just will not be addressed. Both because Obi-Wan doesn't have the time/power/influence to do that and also just because I personally am not interested in some of it. Also he's not omniscient, some of this stuff he would only vaguely know about, he was a padawan with a super busy schedule at this point in the original timeline. There's a lot of Obi-Wan time travel fics out there where he does address a lot of the issues people have asked me about and I'll make a list of ones I recommend for next chapter.
>   * I have decided that Obi-Wan is not getting a lightsaber--I know what I'll be doing with him in regards to weapons and he does not need a lightsaber. When it happens, you'll know what I mean. I won't be answering anymore lightsaber related questions, because I think what I'll be doing will be a fun little surprise.
>   * The Melida-Daan are just Melida-Daan. I'm working on them slowly rebuilding and adapting their own culture(s), so it would be really weird to just throw that out for them to become Mandalorians. I know we all love Mandos, but they get a lot of love in other fics lol
> 


Even if she hadn’t _lived_ a whole life, didn’t have the memories of those experiences, it still karked Cerasi up to know she’d be dead by now.

Killed by one of her own people.

And, yeah, that made her paranoid. Made her less trusting than she arguably should be, but was that so bad, with what Obi-Wan had them working on?

Not that she blamed him, she didn’t even really mind. She’d lived her whole life in danger and was so, so thankful that Obi-Wan’s foreknowledge was helping their planet and people, so what if that came with the promise of a future conflict?

Stopping someone who’d start up a galaxy-wide civil war for power was just as good of a cause as stopping the Elders had been.

She knew it was real, she didn’t doubt Obi-Wan for a second. The whole world had felt odd around him when he’d woken up into this time, like the air was suddenly too heavy and charged. And he was _different_. He’d been mature before, and knew way more than most of them, but this was something else.

The longer he was like this, the more she saw the original Obi-Wan shining through, but for as much as she kind of missed that first version of him they’d met, she was infinitely thankful of the one they had now.

For one, he was a lot better at admitting he liked cuddles (she supposed not really being a physical person for decades could make someone appreciate that, though). For another, he wasn’t heartbroken about the Jedi.

Which was good, because the Jedi were _awful_ and absolutely none of his stories about that old future made them sound any better. She had already discussed it with Nield, all the ways they were going to keep the Jedi away from Obi-Wan, and they’d told others, until she thought probably all the Young, and all the Mandos, and even some of the Middle Generation, were working with them.

She knew better than to ask the others for help. Cerasi _liked_ the Naboo and the Alderaanians, she did, but also she knew they liked the Jedi. They even liked the Senate! 

The Republic had always been this vague idea to her, ideals that made no sense, and hearing Obi-Wan’s stories it was even weirder to her. She knew they’d have to stay in it, for resources and information, but she couldn’t wait for when they could leave.

Melida-Daan had already gotten so much stronger, so much better, and she knew that in a few decades like this they’d be able to take anything that came their way: war, Sith Lords, Separatists. As long as they stuck together, they could accomplish anything.

After all, why else would Obi-Wan’s Force have sent him back _here_?


	8. Chapter 8

It was odd to think about how the enemies of his childhood--who his peers would insist were exceptionally bad--were so insignificant now.

He didn’t fear or hate Xanatos, he didn’t even pity him, he just felt a well of sadness and regret when he thought of the man. And annoyance, at the Council, at all the Jedi, who seemed to think a Trial should be made of impossible choices when even they, on the field, so often failed them.

Obi-Wan knew it was too late to save him, he’d already attacked the Temple in this time, but he couldn’t help but wonder at all the potential lost in him. He’d been so clever--what would have have been like, as a Knight, as a Master? As a General? Would he have followed Dooku and Fell? Hated the Sith for killing Qui-Gon? Would he have ever accepted Obi-Wan as his brother padawan or been as judgemental of him as he had been of Feemor?

Dwelling would get him nowhere, and yet, seeing the press releases about the Temple he couldn’t just ignore or delegate, he couldn’t help it.

Sighing, he called an early break among his staff and left his offices, walking through the revitalized streets of his new home.

Many of the buildings had been restored and, even better, the water and heating systems within them. No longer were they freezing, filthy children cowering in the sewers. 

On his way to the cafe he preferred, there was a new school full of the very young learning to read--Basic was a required part of the curriculum, and Mando’a, Bocce, or Huttese for those who wished it.

Next to that was a garden that had once been barren except for weeds, that now flourished with native plants that had been on the brink of extinction. The students, instructors, and nearby residents took care of them together.

For the Melida-Daan, he was already making huge changes. In the last life, they’d kept struggling for years and years, slowly getting their feet back on the ground, but never thriving. There may have been peace, but peace on its own didn’t lead to prosperity.

There were things he could change, that he _wanted_ to change, that he knew he couldn’t. People whose lives he couldn’t interfere with, planets who would be no better off because of him.

People who he would never _know_ in this life, at least as he had once. So much had changed in this single year and Melida-Daan had come at the beginning of it.

He'd prepared his people for the worst of it, in what ways he could. Thankfully the representatives visiting and working with them didn't see anything odd about a planet recovering from war and trying to rebuild doing things like stockpiling bacta (they would have enough for themselves and, they hoped, enough to offer others when the shortages became too much) or training even the most Force Null of citizens in shielding their minds.

At least, most didn't, he admitted grudgingly that the Mandalorians might suspect something.

As if summoned by his thoughts, he passed a group, nodding in greeting as they gave a far more respectable acknowledgement to a leader of a planet. With them was a few of the Alderaanians, he realized, looking incredibly relaxed considering the armor and weapons, and Mandalorian reputation. He caught the edge of a conversation about some holodrama and made a note to try community movie nights.

In his favorite cafe, "his" table always had a seat open for him, even when it was occupied. Today it was a freed slave, Berkyyst, an older man studying to be a painter with one of the Naboo. 

“I never thought I’d be allowed--able--to do anything like this. To simply sit and draw, and paint, and stare at objects for however long...I worry I will wake up back--back there--at any moment.”

Obi-Wan gave a knowing look, hand running over his neck, the remembered weight of the collar a little more present in this younger body. “I am glad you found your passion, everyone is better for it. Melida-Daan is better for it.”

“No, no, I am just--just an old man doodling.”

“I can see your ‘doodles’ right there,” he pointed to the worn piece of flimsy on the table, with detailed sketches of some of the pastries in the cafe display and a few of the patrons. “You’re only learning now and already I can see the passion in your work. In fact, we have been talking about other ways we can improve the city, and would be honored if you were to take one of the walls we have slated for murals.”

The man’s red eyes widened. “No, I couldn’t.”

“Of course you can. We are all made better by seeing beautiful things in our everyday lives, we’ve seen too much of the opposite. It is for the good of our people.”

That went far to convince him, already loyal to their people after such a short time on his new home. Obi-Wan tried hard to never make anyone feel like he was doing them favors, not on Melida-Daan--once he had to start making more moves, off-planet, that would be when he collected favors and used them ruthlessly.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of maybe starting a collection for Melida/Daan related fics, would people be interested in that?

Something was happening with the Mandalorians and Nield, eerily perfect at delegating when he didn’t know any of the details, sent Obi-Wan to check on them.

They had an encampment at the edge of the city, semi-permanent shelters erected for their long contract, ships parked nearby for those who preferred to live out of them. Despite having no enemies nearby (anymore), they had a sturdy perimeter setup and the more vulnerable and important sections were at the very center.

As Obi-Wan walked towards the tent used as a sort of office, the fury and rage of the Mandalorians nearly choking him, he thought he knew what it was they were reacting to.

Entering, as none of the Young ever seemed to be barred from any part of the Mandalorians’ lives, he flinched as he caught the tail-end of a yelled threat against the Jedi.

Adria Wren immediately cut herself off, eyes wide. “Not _you_ , Ob’ika, the _jetiise_!”

He gave a wane smile as some of the others rushed to agree, despite their clear anger, not wanting to upset him. “I know,” he assured him, before biting his lip and looking around, eyes locking with Jango’s. “We noticed that you all seem...distressed. We wanted to check on you.” And it was “we,” even though only Obi-Wan was there, the other two at the edges of his mind.

The Mandalorians shifted around, some controlling their expressions better than others.

"Some of our people were on a job," Jango finally offered, "it was a trap. The governor was working with _Krys'tad_ and called on the Jedi to kill the _Haat Mando’ade_ that were hired, claiming they were terrorists."

Obi-Wan pursed his lips, wishing that he'd been wrong about what had happened. "I'm so sorry---they should have _investigated_."

"They probably did," Maysen Coruk muttered, her normally kindhearted voice cold, "the _hut’uun_ just wanted to kill some _Mando’ade_ for fun."

He thought of protesting, maybe even of giving them hints of what had really happened, but...there wasn’t an excuse. And he knew this wouldn’t be the last time the Jedi were used in this manner. 

Instead, he looked to Jango again. “What do you need from us?”

That was received with a half smile, a softening of the look in his eyes. “There were a few survivors, the numbers we had there small enough that the _jetiise_ only sent a few of their own and they managed to get away.”

“They need medical attention? I’ll secure a room for them at the central hospital. Do they have families? Are they safe remaining where they are?” 

With the True Mandalorians mostly intact, with Jango clearly alive and well, he didn’t think Death Watch would go after their clans as they had. He’d hoped, even, that despite this event there would still be enough of a framework of peace that their civil war didn’t even happen.

Jango tilted his head, a gesture of consideration leftover from when he was in full armor. “Brahl and I will coordinate that, most should be fine where they are, but we may need to pull a few more people from here to make sure.”

“Of course, we understand. Thanks to you, we’re not exactly an easy target anymore, even without most of your supercommandos here.”

He thought many of the other Melida-Daan would be sad to see them go, as this might be the start of a slow trickle to the end of their open-ended contract. It surprised Obi-Wan that _he’d_ be sad to see them go, and not just because of how often he was able to remember the more pleasant times with his troopers when he was around the Mandalorians.

A few of them, though, tensed at that, and once more they were exchanging looks that Obi-Wan couldn’t quite interpret. 

“We’re not leaving, yet, Ob’ika,” Maysen assured him, her ears twitching in emotion. “We spent too long drafting those plans to withdraw, yet.” She looked to Jango to confirm and Obi-Wan felt something like relief when he gave a firm nod.

From there, both sides assured of where the other stood, they started planning. Obi-Wan brought in Nena and Kima, who along with training as diplomats and representatives also were learning a lot about travel needs, to assist before he went personally to the hospital to see to the space they might need.

***

Final reports had only two dozen True Mandalorians dying at Galidraan. It was vastly different than in the last timeline and Obi-Wan knew the ripples of this change would be far-reaching, considering everything that had been directly or indirectly caused by it.

He wished he still had contacts in the Order, that he might find out what happened to the _Jedi_ that had been involved. Would Dooku be so disillusioned if it wasn’t such a slaughter? He didn’t know the exact timeline, but he was almost certain one of the Sith had already started working on Dooku, they played very long games after all.

Which was fine with Obi-Wan, he had an entire lifetime and more worth of experiences to pit against the Sith Lords. He could be more patient, he could be more subtle. He had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and forth on this chapter for awhile trying to decide what to do about the Mandalorian characters I needed and eventually decided just to use OCs, even though I really dislike using OCs and have already used way more than I normally do lol There were a ton of True Mandalorians, most of whom we never get names for, and for the few canon characters we do have I didn't want to maybe use them here and then think of a better use for them later on. I'll eventually get a list of OCs going on my tumblr or something so people can keep track.
> 
> Mandalorian words:  
> jetii/jetiise - Jedi/Jedi (pl)  
> Ob'ika - cutesy way of saying Obi-Wan  
> Krys'tad - Death Watch  
> Haat Mando'ade - True Mandalorians  
> hut'uun - coward  
> Mando'ade - Mandalorians


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a [collection for works with a heavy Melida/Daan influence](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MelidaDaan), like not just ones that mention it, but ones set there or where it's a huge part of it. I'll be (probably slowly) adding fics to it, but it's an open and moderated one, so afaik others should be able to add theirs to it and I just need to approve them.

“You’re wasted on blasters,” Syn Eldar commented after an hour of Obi-Wan teaching weaponless kata to his students.

The elder Mandalorian often helped out with the lessons, as a melee expert who had a soft spot for children tinged with old grief that Obi-Wan knew better than to prod. And Jango liked them, not that Obi-Wan necessarily took that to mean they were totally safe.

Obi-Wan smirked. “I’m not _that_ bad of a shot.” In truth he was a great shot, even if he’d never love such weapons the way most of the people around him did.

Syn fell into step beside him as he walked out of the previously devastated park that had been repurposed as a training ground and he realized the conversation wasn’t over. The Mandalorians had a tendency to push topics on them, something that the Melida-Daan were slowly getting used to not being a sign of disapproval or an attempt at control.

“I meant, you need a blade.” They held up a hand when Obi-Wan started motioning to the sheathed vibroknife on his thigh. “A _real_ one, Ob’ika.”

“I can’t exactly get a _jetii'kad_ out here.”

“Now you’re playing dense, that’s not the only _kad_ there is. The Mand’alor would grant you the right to wield _beskar_ , even if you’ll never wear it.”

“...Oh.”

He hadn’t actually considered it, content to wait until a time when the Force gave him the opportunity for a new lightsaber. But after that, he couldn’t get it out of his head.

But it wasn’t _just_ a _beskar_ sword he thought of, in his dreams it had a sharper edge than any forge could give it, and glowed defiant against a darkened world.

When he woke up, after finally, finally getting it, he felt distracted the entire day, barely paying attention to even Nield and Cerasi.

Alchemy was of the _Dark_. It was Bogan, it was Sith.

It was used for some of the most horrific acts, twisting people’s bodies, their minds, at the will of the wielder.

And, yet, it had forged Je’daii swords before there were Jedi.

 _Beskar_ combined with the Force...that was something new to Obi-Wan. Thrilling and terrifying in equal parts. Not as convenient as a lightsaber, perhaps not capable of cutting through as much, but just as deadly. More, maybe, as the blade itself was of physical matter, not just light through kyber, and would hold up to elements like cortosis where lightsabers failed.

Was that why the Force was pushing him towards this...blasphemy? Because he still remembered what it was like, fighting against armor and weapons that could resist, even short out, lightsabers and the thrill of fear that could cause.

***

Jango had been off-world for weeks dealing with the fallout from Galidraan, giving Obi-Wan more than enough time to dwell on the topic of a force-imbued sword. When he returned, he found Obi-Wan in the forge, discussing with one of the armorers how a _beskad_ could be made.

The nod of acknowledgement they were given was explicit enough permission for all to realize he approved of Obi-Wan’s usage for _beskar_. The wave of his hand, though, interrupted the learning and he was soon following the Mand’alor into the personal ship he resided in.

“It’s a good idea,” Jango began, taking off his _buy’ce_ before digging through his cupboards, Obi-Wan rolling his eyes at yet another person who thought he couldn’t feed himself. “I know most of us would feel more comfortable if you had some sort of _kad_ , considering you’ve a decade in training with them.”

“Thank you. If it’s...too much, for a non-Mandalorian, I _can_ use other materials. Obviously the old ones were made of different metals.”

That gained him one of Jango’s signature unimpressed glares. “Ob’ika, is it that you don’t want to accept a gift or that you don’t want to tie yourself further to us?”

Obi-Wan didn’t let himself respond immediately, he had too much respect for him for that, so he spent the time Jango prepared their meal thinking through the suggested possibilities and others. And Jango simply let him, the silence anticipatory but not anxious. 

Finally, poking at the noodle dish set in front of him, he started the conversation up again. “I do not want to give all of you the impression that I will become a Mandalorian, but also I do not want to give the outside galaxy that impression, either. If conflict comes to Melida-Daan or to me while I am representing us abroad, I don’t want someone to see a _beskad_ and assume that my actions reflect on you.”

He waited, not pushing Jango anymore than he’d been pushed. The food was good, spicier than the average Melida-Daan cuisine, but not too much for Obi-Wan to handle, even with his younger body.

“We don’t expect anything from you, we aren’t doing this trying to bribe you. You were all in...a situation no _adiik_ should ever be in. You were _abandoned_ to it. You deserve a gift or two.” Jango smiled at him, eyes soft, and Obi-Wan thought of Cody, and Rex, and then pushed those thoughts away. “And if some _ord’inni_ sees a _jetii’beskad_ and thinks you’re representing the _Mando’ade_ , they’d probably already been looking for an excuse to come at us.” His smile turned into a predatory thing, then, eyes narrowing. “And we’ll welcome that fight.”

Obi-Wan ducked his head, but didn’t bother to further conceal his pleased smile. Maybe the _Vode_ he’d cared about in the last life would never exist, but there were pieces of them in Jango he’d cling to if he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mandalorian Words:  
> jetii'kad - Jedi sword, aka lightsaber  
> kad - sword  
> beskar - Mandalorian iron  
> Ob'ika - cutesy way of saying Obi-Wan  
> beskad - beskar sword (sometimes it's a particular style, but here I'm just meaning any sword of beskar)  
> buy'ce - helmet  
> adiik - children  
> ord'inni - fool  
> jetii'beskad - made up word for a force sword made of beskar  
> Vode - term for the clone troopers
> 
> Bogan is the term originally used for the Dark side, from when it was seen as possible to balance the dark and light (Ashla), even within the early sect of Je'daii that became the Jedi. Force alchemy was a common practice back then, but in "modern" times is basically only used by the Sith (is sometimes just called Sith Alchemy, even).
> 
> A force-imbued sword is basically a real sword that, using Force alchemy, is imbued with the Force to various extents. They had unnaturally sharp edges and glowed in various ways from the Force. They were phased out of use by the proto-lightsaber, called Forcesabers.


	11. Chapter 11

“All those in favor of Obi-Wan becoming our Senator--”

“I’m going to go recite the _Resol’nare_ to Jango now." Obi-Wan actually stood up, eyes narrowed in threat, as the others laughed at his pain.

Nield waved him back down, wiping tears from his eyes. “The look on your face! No, but, truly, Obi-Wan, I agree that Kima is a good choice--if nothing else she’s old enough they won’t treat her like a little kid," all of the Young in the room rolled their eyes at that, "but this _does_ fall under your purview.”

He made a face. “I’m aware. I’ll be visiting to check on her while she’s there, I’ve already got a schedule worked out.” One that, if he had predicted events well enough, would see him meeting some of the people he wanted as contacts.

Nield seemed to guess at the deeper meaning and nodded in agreement. Obi-Wan thought that would be the end of it, at least for a year or so, but he hadn't counted on just how nervous all of the Melida-Daan were about living on Coruscant and being a part of galactic politics.

"It's not as though it's harder than fighting a war, just a different sort of battlefront."

Kima grimaced, giving Obi-Wan a very pointed look. "I _barely_ fought in the war, I was taking pot shots at anything that looked like a Melida from a guard station for years, not bombing space ports and raiding weapons caches."

"That's an even better comparison, then. Politics is a lot of _feeling_ like something big should be happening and like you're not doing enough, with occasional moments of excitement that may or may not work out the way you want them to. Alderaan has already agreed to assist us and, considering we haven't had a Senator in ages and aren't particularly powerful, you won't be given many responsibilities besides the obvious."

They'd spoken of this before, at least twice, but he understood how nervous she was. He'd gone into early missions an anxious mess, sure he'd fail, sure he'd be found wanting.

"I know you've got a lot of good reasons not to go back there, Obi-Wan," he braced himself, knowing what was coming, "but, do you think you could come with us for the first bit?"

Technically, there was nothing in his vague outline of plots that would be hindered by him starting early. He just...wasn't sure how he'd react to seeing Coruscant as it had been, the Temple brimming with Light, the Republic banners where once there were Imperial ones. He'd never gone back, not for decades and decades. 

He studied Kima, her rudimentary but growing shields let some of her nerves, her hope and fear, slip out, and he felt his shoulders slumping. "Fine, but only for two weeks, any longer and the others will flay me alive for leaving them with so much of my work."

***  
It wasn't as bad as it could have been. He stayed calm as they descended to the planet. He was definitely not anxious as they walked towards the apartments their government had been assigned and took a quick tour of the Senate building.

Obi-Wan's shields were harder than beskar and air tight, half his concentration on them at all times, but it wasn't his worst experience ever. They had yet to pass near any Jedi and Palpatine wasn't even a Senator, yet (though he knew better to assume that meant there wasn't a Sith lurking nearby).

He gave Kima soft prompts through the Force as they were greeted by the politicians they passed. They lacked a bond, but she was sensitive enough to pick up on the reassurance and pride he sent her. Each time he watched her confidence grow.

They stood out in the Senate, not just because they were more conservatively dressed, but because of the weapons even Kima wore. No blasters, they didn't want to give security too many heart attacks, but they all had at least a “ceremonial” blade at their side.

A few of the Mandalorians and Naboo had spent a whole day helping Kima learn to conceal weapons on her and how best to fight with some of the less common ones. The long knife hanging from a belt at her waist was the distraction.

Inevitably, they ran into someone Obi-Wan didn’t particularly want to deal with. In this case, it was Nute Gunray, who had yet to become Viceroy but who still had an inflated sense of his own self-worth. And seemed to believe that Melida-Daan would be easy pickings.

Obi-Wan found it nearly impossible to smile politely and nod along to the conversation when he knew what Gunray was up to, when soon enough the whole galaxy would be suffering because of him. But he hadn’t acted _yet_ and until he did, Obi-Wan couldn’t move against him. 

Still...it was fun to watch him run into walls trying to see through Obi-Wan’s wordplay. And if it made some of the other Senators around them more suspicious of Gunray, that couldn’t be entirely blamed on Obi-Wan.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated what order to put this and the next chapter into, since these chapters aren't strictly chronological because they're set around _themes_ more than order of events, but decided to go with this one first. Just thought I'd give the warning, though, that a lot of these are happening concurrently right now.

“What is that supposed to be?” Cerasi gave a dubious look to the twisted metal in Obi-Wan’s hands.

He pouted, though she would know he wasn’t truly upset. “It’s my third try at something no one has managed in centuries, maybe millennia, as far as I know,” he protested.

“But isn’t the Force supposed to be guiding you?” she teased back, walking around his station in the armorers tent and poking at anything she seemed to think wouldn’t harm her.

Shaking his head, he checked the forge’s setting to get ready for his fourth attempt. “As far as I know, struggling to make this may be part of the process. It involves...thinking about the Force in a way that just isn’t done anymore, not by the Jedi at least.”

Not by the Sith, either, of course, both sides too intent on ignoring any sort of balance between them. And as much as Bogan was just the Dark side...approaching it as he was made it feel _different_. It wasn’t the overwhelming rush, the deceptive seduction, he’d felt in his brushes with the Dark in his last life. 

He just hoped this sense that he could control himself while using it wasn’t a trap in itself.

“I suppose it’s good you have a hobby,” Cerasi finally said, over the sound of the forge and him working the beskar back into some vaguely sword-like shape. “Even if it doesn’t look at all relaxing.”

“Not everyone can take up _flower arrangement_.”

“Hey! That is _not_ what I’m doing! Some of those flowers are _poisonous_!”

Obi-Wan nodded, sagely. “Oh, of course, you’re learning flower arrangement to poison our enemies.”

She made a frustrated sound and he was sure that if he wasn’t doing something moderately dangerous, she would have probably punched him in the shoulder for his comment. 

“I’m learning so _we’re_ not poisoned and...okay, also, so maybe we can poison our enemies,” she muttered at the end. “We know who a lot of them are and they don’t know who _we_ are, yet, so it would be easy!”

Imagining Palpatine choking to death in his office because of a bad reaction to a flower, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but laugh. Cerasi joined in soon after, because even though she couldn’t have the same visual, she had probably guessed what he was thinking.

“I suppose you’ll have to take up _cooking_ , next?”

“Ew, no, Nield can cook and that’s all we need.”

“ _I_ can cook.”

“You can make rations taste slightly better, that’s not cooking!”

He had to stop his project for the day, at that point, because there was no way he was letting her get away with such an insult (even if, maybe, she was telling the truth).

***

That it took him so long to actually forge his sword wasn’t the delay it could have been, because he still had one more element he’d been waiting on--a focusing crystal. Technically, it could be kyber, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by trying to get one (and they certainly didn’t have the funds to spare to buy one). 

Instead, he had reached out to a few smugglers he’d known in the last life who weren’t completely awful, and Jango had done the same, with the offer of a few years free use of their spaceports without having to register their entrance and exit into Melida-Daan territory. Having a berth where they didn’t need to worry about being easily tracked in Republican systems would always have a certain appeal. And it gave Obi-Wan more connections that he’d need for upcoming events.

After a few months, he had an array of crystals to choose from (and Melida-Daan had a few easily accessible smugglers for controlled materials). He meditated with them nearby for a few hours everyday, feeling them, feeling the way the Force and his particular, focused use of the Force moved through them. Eventually, it was a star-shaped piece of quarzite, a deep purple that looked nearly black in low light, that he chose.

It took three exhausting days of cancelled meetings and only sleeping and eating when Cerasi and Nield dragged him to bed. At first, he thought he’d _failed_ , that the Force had somehow overestimated his ability to control tiny slips of Bogan.

And then, in the slip of time between one moment and the next, he understood.

Obi-Wan sent quick messages to the others and went straight to the closest training yard, not caring that he probably looked like a complete mess.

When he revealed the sword, he wasn’t surprised by the gasps of wonder--he wouldn’t _brag_ , of course, but it was something unique and beautiful for that uniqueness. The lighter parts of the beskar brought out the purple of the focusing crystal, the darker parts seeming all the more darker for the added color. And around the whole blade glowed a near-black halo.

Whatever else it would do, when he finally faced the Sith (and, though he hoped not as an opponent, the Jedi), it would make an impression.


	13. Chapter 13

Jango had been back on planet for two days before Obi-Wan had the time to speak to him in private. They both were leaders, Jango in the middle of a civil war completely unlike the one in Obi-Wan’s last lifetime, and scheduling was perhaps Obi-Wan’s greatest challenge at the moment.

It was made easier by the fact that Jango found _him_ , right when he was finishing up for the evening. “I heard you wanted to meet.”

Obi-Wan waved the door closed behind him and stood, not wanting to be behind his desk and give this the impression of just another business meeting. They needed the Mandalorians, and Jango in particular, too much to ever let the relationship between them cool down.

“I have an offer. But I want to say from the start, it’s not the _only_ way. It would be...very nice for...our long term plans, but if you don’t accept, that doesn’t mean you can’t counter.”

Jango stared at him, brows furrowed. “ _Tion’cuyir_?”

“We have a surplus of bacta. I won’t bore you with why that matters, I know you know about the ‘shortage’,” Jango’s eyes narrowed at the sarcastic note Obi-Wan couldn’t keep from the last word, so he hurried on, “Death Watch will be affected by this shortage as much as anyone, lessening their numbers, making them more cautious. Well, anyone but those of us who planned ahead.”

“You’re going to give us bacta as payment for a job.”

“ _Elek_. If you’re willing to take it.” He grimaced, knowing Cerasi wouldn't be happy with how mercenary he sounded. “But if not...Jango, of course we’re not going to let any of you suffer.”

He held up his hand, stopping Obi-Wan from going further. “We don’t need handouts. And we’re in a good enough position for jobs, especially if you’re willing to let some of us out of this long-term contract with you. _Ke’rejorhaa'ir_.”

“In a few weeks, the Senate is going to agree to negotiations with the Stark Commercial Combine. I wish for around ten of your people, the ones ready to deal with treachery from all sides, to escort the Senator who will be sent and protect him and assist anyone else sent with him.”

“You’re very sure of this. Is Kim’ika already that involved?”

Kima had helped a little, Valorum was about as nice as a highborn Coruscanti politician could get and did try to make some time for her. And their own work with the smugglers had helped, too, gossip was cheap for those who they liked. But that wouldn't be enough to explain the details he knew. Obi-Wan was always walking a line these days, between telling more people the truth and telling them pretty lies. With Jango the truth was _awful_ , so it wasn’t so hard to hold back.

“There are many...types of Force use. I’m strong in what’s called the Unifying Force. For most of us, that means we’re naturally prone to forms of foresight and prophecy.” He shrugged. “I have visions.”

“And a Force vision told you this Senator needs protection.”

“We’ve both seen war, Jango. If this negotiation goes the way it did, everyone there will know it, too.”

He let Jango contemplate his words, digging a glass and bottle of tihaar out of one of the cabinets and pouring him a drink. For himself, though he knew Jango wouldn't judge him for drinking alcohol, he set about preparing a cup of tea from the kettle he kept ready, letting the familiar ritual soothe his nerves.

“Are there any other conditions?”

Obi-Wan turned back to him, seeing he was nursing his drink and staring out the window behind the desk at the small park and the children playing there. “They should take at least two ships, neither of them connected to Republic systems. We will be fully stocking the infirmaries in them, as well. And...there will be Jedi they will need to cooperate with.”

If he was lucky, Master Tyvokka would never be in danger. If the initial fight went as it had before, with a decent bacta supply he’d probably live. He was a Jedi with incredibly powerful insight, such that Obi-Wan couldn’t rule out Plagueis planning the entire Stark Hyperspace War just to kill him.

“This vision must have been very detailed.”

Using the excuse of taking a sip of his tea, Obi-Wan tried to analyze what he could through Jango’s strong natural shields. Was it suspicion at Obi-Wan or just the situation? Was that thread of hostility because he was upset at another war or with making his people fight alongside the Jedi?

“I’ve been stockpiling bacta for a reason.” It was both an example of his supposed foresight and a reminder of what Jango had to gain.

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t take this contract, we’ve done protection details before. I’ll make sure whoever goes is ready.”

“ _Vor entye_ ,” Obi-Wan breathed out, in relief.

Jango chuckled, finishing off his glass and sparing a moment to ruffle Obi-Wan’s hair before he ducked out of the way. “Your Mando’a is coming along well.”

“Yes, well, I suppose we’ll have to be ready for when you regain your Empire,” he teased, though he didn’t miss the dark thread of desire the idea shot through Jango, having forgotten that this wasn’t the broken bounty hunter of the last life. “Here, the initial contract I wrote up,” Obi-Wan all-but shoved the datapad at him.

As if sensing his unease, Jango took the pad with a nod before heading to the door. “I’ll send the lead _ori'ramikad_ to you tomorrow to negotiate.” 

***

Obi-Wan hadn’t really thought about what Jango would _do_ in this lifetime, just about what he _wouldn’t_ do. That he wouldn’t watch his people slaughtered or be enslaved right after, that he wouldn’t be so bitter he’d take the contract from Dooku to destroy the Jedi.

Now he was forced to consider the ramifications beyond what he knew. Without the power vacuum left by Jango’s disappearance and the _Haat’ade_ decimation, neither Death Watch nor the New Mandalorians had as much strength and support as before. And all of the people who had run to Death Watch after Satine had taken control and cracked down on traditional practices now had a better option for preserving their culture. 

Jango was _powerful_. And he was _dangerous_ to the New Mandalorians. He never really spoke of them, but Obi-Wan had heard enough from the other _Haat’ade_ to suspect they hated them just as much as they hated Death Watch.

If a group of True Mandalorians help protect a Senator and a bunch of Jedi, help prevent a disastrous battle, would the Senate rethink backing the New Mandalorians? Had Obi-Wan now set Jango up for even more power?

The worst part was...he didn’t know how he felt about it. He’d loved Satine, he’d felt as though his heart had been torn from his chest when she died, but her viewpoint had been flawed. Complete pacifism couldn’t work in the face of the Sith and...and destroying Mandalorian culture, its language, the ease of acceptance newcomers found, everything that made it unique in the galaxy, was wrong.

In this time, Satine still had her father, who still supported Jango as the traditionalist's leader. Even if she were a pacifist and sympathized with the New Mandalorians, she couldn’t be so far gone, yet. At the very beginning of his mission with her, she hadn’t been a fanatic, just an idealist.

Obi-Wan could find a way to work on her, to make sure she didn’t forsake too much of the Mandalorian traditions. Because he was starting to suspect Jango wasn’t going to leave the New Mandalorians in peace, if, no, _once_ he won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a:  
> Tion’cuyir - What is it?  
> Elek - Yes  
> Ke’ejorhaa'ir - tell me  
> Vor entye - Thank you.  
> Ori'ramikad - supercommando  
> Haat’ade - shortened term for True Mandalorians
> 
> I made a quick breakdown of the [Stark Hyperspace War on Tumblr](https://manyangledone.tumblr.com/post/624275052017467392/the-stark-hyperspace-war), for anyone who doesn't know what happened. Basically it was the last major conflict in the Republic before Naboo and set up some people to gain power and prestige who shouldn't necessarily have gotten it, the effect of which was felt during Naboo and the Clone Wars.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the awesome comments!

Making a type of sword that arguably hasn't been made in centuries (possibly millennia), was one thing. Actually using it was something else entirely. While the Force he'd imbued it with made it feel more like a lightsaber than any other weapon he had access to, made it feel like an extension of himself and his will, there was still the small matter of an actual blade to contend with.

Obi-Wan needed to practice and that meant he needed to fight as many people in as many ways as he could. Thankfully, his people were as eager as they were wary for the chance.

Training against trained Force sensitives was something that even the Mandalorians didn’t have much experience in, so of course they were among the first to accept the offer, once he made it to the larger group.

A few of them held their own against him. Even if he had decades of training and had once been considered one of the foremost masters of Soresu, his young body lacked the muscle memory. He’d made his sword short enough to be usable, knowing now how to reforge it, but that didn’t make it easier to use. And the weight of the force sword was making the movements not what he was expecting out of them. Nevermind the adjustments necessary to cut with two edges instead of the entire blade.

Syn was perhaps his most regular sparring partner, the two creating a near-regular schedule of an hour in the morning before Obi-Wan’s duties took him away. Each week, Obi-Wan could see his own steady improvement, could feel Syn’s frustration but also the pride from the Mandalorian. 

When he was on Melida-Daan, Jango often made excuses to spar, as well. Even if he hadn’t killed six Jedi with his bare hands in this timeline, he was still one of the most difficult Force Null opponents Obi-Wan had faced in either life. He had been trained in the ways of fighting Force sensitives, as some Mandalorians were, and he used those techniques ruthlessly even if he was less familiar with a sword in his hands.

But swordplay was the least of Obi-Wan’s worries at the moment.

“We can’t _shoot_ you!”

He smiled at Joli. “The blasters are on the lowest stun setting, Joli, and it will be good practice for all of us. It will help me with blocking shots from actual opponents and it will help you learn how to get through a Jedi’s guard.”

No one ever stopped to ask why he thought they might fight the Jedi someday and it was starting to become unsettling. 

Yenina, whose previous experience with real fighting had been leading a slave rebellion on a small mining planet, was already pointing her blaster at him, a sharp grin showing off her sharper teeth. “Don’t worry, young one, the Archon can take a few hits.”

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at her, but brought his sword up into guard position, and soon after she’d begun shooting and he’d started deflecting, the others joined in.

After, Jango stayed nearby, watching him care for his sword carefully as the others trickled off for work or home. “What are you expecting to face, that you need over two dozen blasters firing at you at once?”

Resisting the urge to stroke a beard he couldn’t even grow yet, Obi-Wan just gave him a knowing look. “It’s better to over-prepare.”

***

Obi-Wan spent a not-insignificant amount of his life now pretending--pretending not to know as much, not to be able to do as much, to be more than a very old man combined with a young boy trying to find a middle ground in his memories and desires.

It was exhausting.

Perhaps he clung to Cerasi and Nield all the harder for it, that they didn't require him to pretend. They’d discussed the dichotomy in his head (in his _soul_ ) more than once and concluded it didn’t really change much for them. Their friendship had been based on being allies, of facing impossible odds together, not on his past.

The pretending was not terribly hard among the Melida-Daan, who had already been a little in awe of a Jedi Padawan sacrificing their own, relatively comfortable life for the Young. If he knew a little too much, if he was capable of a little too much, they didn’t question it.

With the Naboo and the Alderaanians, it was mostly knowledge he had to hold back. They didn’t spend very much time watching him train and knew just enough about the Jedi to assume that even a young one would be calm and collected with the weight of a world on his shoulders.

The hard part was, as he was starting to think it might always be, with the Mandalorians. Made all the worse when the ones who had survived the skirmish of Galidraan came to Melida-Daan.

These were people who had seen Jedi on the field recently, had seen senior Padawans and young Knights who would not be capable of what Obi-Wan was. Worse than that, though, they were well-trained fighters who could tell when someone was holding back, if not with the Force than at least physically.

As far as anyone but Cerasi and Nield knew, Obi-Wan trained in every spare minute he had and when he wasn’t training he was learning. They helped him hide away, helped him move materials and datapads around, to make it look like he was intensely researching everything they needed to know when, more often than not, they were locked up in one of the rooms and he was teaching _them_.

It became a joke around the system, and probably outside of it, too, that the Triarchy of Melida-Daan was based around preparing for the worst and actually getting something better. The bacta shortage's relatively quick resolution, with Thyferria and the Trade Federation's manufactured shortage, was used as an example of that.

Some whispered it was the little Jedi on the planet who just _knew_ of such things. Some of those whispers would, eventually, get out to the wrong people.


	15. Interlude

Lesé Medaine, known as Queen Ekay of Naboo for another few months, had spent years learning the ins and outs of her system’s politics, a process less cut-throat than it could be, but not without danger. She still didn’t think she’d be able to handle half of what the Melida-Daan had.

After a year of working with them, this was her first trip to their own planet, just a few sectors over but still a nearly two day flight because of the lack of major hyperlanes. She’d been prepared for much, but the planet was both better and worse than she’d been expecting.

It was unnerving to see the so obviously armed and intimidating guards around the spaceport, half Melida-Daan and half in the distinctive armor that marked them as Mandalorian. But the state of the spaceport itself (which she knew hadn’t survived the war completely intact) was quite modern and clean. Though with the unmistakable little signs of security measures that meant it could be locked down in seconds, if necessary.

The fields on the way into the city were in various states of being reclaimed for farming, a few obviously written off as lost causes from contamination, fitted with fences and warning signs about toxicity. In the distance, she could see people and droids at work.

The capital was nothing like Theed. Of course she hadn’t expected it to be, even without two centuries of war the Melida-Daan shared no cultural connections to the Naboo. Yet there was something so obviously martial about it all, as though it, like the port, was prepared to lockdown at any moment (or scramble fighters), despite it being a thriving city. 

Melida-Daan was ruled and run by people younger than her, who were, it seemed, living in a constant state of fear.

She would discuss that when she returned, see if they couldn't do more. The isolationists in her government were weak, for now, and she hoped her successors would keep them that way.

This was so close to Naboo, but none of them had ever met anyone from this planet before they requested aid. It brought to light how few allies they had and Lesé had been spending much of her political capital righting that. As the Melida-Daan were showing, having the right allies could mean the difference between survival or falling into the hands of something like the Trade Federation or the Hutts.

"Your majesty!" 

Her attention was drawn to a small party waiting at the gate: Archon Nield, who she knew only from holos, and some of his staff (and guards, always guards). 

"Your grace," she returned, with more pomp than she needed to, but the hope she could teach him by example.

He gave a knowing look, as if someone else in his life did the same, and she spared a moment to remember Archon Obi-Wan’s impeccable manners and smiled back. 

“My thanks for hosting me, Archon.”

“It’s our honor, Queen Ekay. Other than the Mand’alor, you’re the first planetary leader to visit since the war ended.” They began walking, her handmaidens folded into the group with Nield. “The other Young are very much looking forward to seeing such a legendary figure as a Queen of Naboo.”

There was a teasing lilt to his voice that was charming for his youth, which she thought he’d be able to use to devastating effect once he was older. Like everything with his people, it was also backed by hard-earned confidence that gave him much needed authority.

“What a responsibility you place on me, your grace,” she teased back, earning a smile from him.

“On Melida-Daan, we only ask of people what we know they’re capable of.”

Now she chuckled and he joined her, though her mind wandered with that thought. Even among the Naboo, she would not say that always held true. Yet, something about the Triarchy made her believe that if anyone could manage such, it was them.

“And I am very much looking forward to seeing that, your grace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queen Ekay isn't given a real name in canon, so I made one up.


	16. Chapter 16

“You loved her?”

Cerasi didn’t seem terribly impressed with Satine and Obi-Wan gave himself a few moments to appreciate the irony of that.

“So much.”

“Not enough to leave the Order for her, though.” Nield was being _smug_ and if they weren’t standing in formation waiting to officially greet Duke Kryze and his daughter, Obi-Wan would have elbowed him for it.

“Maybe if I’d met her first,” he teased, instead.

They had no time for a follow-up, because Jango was there, in his polished armor and cape looking every bit the Mand’alor, and the Duke and Satine were at his side, being introduced.

Obi-Wan smiled at them both, welcoming, and was the one to handle most of the initial meeting, half-Core diplomacy and half-Melida-Daan abruptness. They were all still finding their feet in this new world they were building, but he had the most experience, still.

Technically, with a whole lifetime lived as a Jedi, first apprenticed to Qui-Gon, for all his faults, and then on his own missions, “the Negotiator” would always have the most experience.

***

Duke Kryze was interested in their planetary defenses, so Deila took him, along with Jango and a few others. That left Cerasi and Obi-Wan with Satine as Nield went back to work (they were beginning to expect he _liked_ paperwork, the freak).

They offered her a tour of Zehava, taking her through what they’d begun to call the Cultural District--the walls all painted with the murals of local artists, the shops all selling local-made wares, and the last remaining (extremely censored) public Hall of Evidence sitting on one edge.

She expressed interest in seeing that last and they took her through, awkwardly shifting in place as she scowled through a few of the holos. Obi-Wan had thought the editors had done a great job at removing the ethnocentric propaganda from them, but they hadn’t stripped them of their martial history, their instructions about defense and training.

Somehow Satine had ended up nearly as bad now as she’d been in the _end_ of his mission to Mandalore in his last life, and he wasn’t sure which of the changes he made had done that. Was Jango Fett being around, as an active Mand’alor, really that trying for her?

After the tour, they offered Satine a room in one of the communal houses, filled with others around her age. She seemed relieved to not be surrounded by the _Haat’ade_ and Obi-Wan _did_ have to step on Cerasi’s foot, out of sight, to keep her from commenting on that.

***

Obi-Wan invited Satine to lunch two days later, just between them. They sat at a local restaurant, at a table looking out at a busy street that led off to what they now called the Mandalorian district. The food was a mix of Melida-Daan's own cuisine and Mandalorian, somehow spicier and sweeter at once, and was becoming a hit among the locals.

"If you don't mind me saying, you seem tense," he said into the silence after they ordered.

She studied him with unnecessary intensity considering the casualness he'd spoken with. They'd spent a year together, once, and she'd haunted his dreams--good and bad--for longer than that. He knew what that look meant.

"It's upsetting to be here as a guest of the True Mandalorians. They were supposed to protect you while you set your world to rights, not become a permanent feature. You worked so hard to _stop_ a war, but how can you continue the path to peace with their influence?"

There were many ways he could answer that, most he didn't think she'd take kindly to. He wondered what Jango was doing, back in Mandalore, if perhaps he'd started destroying the New Mandalorians' power. If he'd been using violence to do it, wanting to not just destroy their structures and economy, but force them to fight and lose their very ideals. Obi-Wan wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea, with his memories of the Jedi forced to compromise too many times.

"We spent two hundred years, off and on, at war," he finally began, watching her face. "Most of us have always known it, even in peace it was hanging over our heads, waiting to strike. It will forever be part of our culture, what we're trying to do is build with it. Honor our recent past, our far past, and build for our future."

She scowled. "That's ridiculous. Mandalorians have been far more warlike for far longer and there are many of us who can put violence aside."

" _Lis'gar_?" he asked, and she flinched at his easy use of Mando'a, something the New Mandalorians discouraged. " _Bal su cuyir Mando'ade_?"

"There's more to being Mandalorian than the _Resol'nare_. All you know is from the True Mandalorians, what people like Fett tell you isn't the full truth."

Obi-Wan took another moment, pretending like he was considering her words as to not look rude. She was older than he, technically, and certainly adult enough by Mandalorian standards, but he outranked her and could easily come off as condescending. It wasn't something he had to worry about with the Melida-Daan, who had too egalitarian of a culture, now, to really care, but a Mandalorian Duke's daughter was something else.

"I heard that your father was thinking of sending you to an academy on Coruscant."

"Yes, Fett has plans to make war against Death Watch and I'll be a target, so my father is sending me away," he wasn't sure which part of that she was more disgruntled by.

"Come here, instead." He held up a hand to keep her initial questions in check. "We've rebuilt much of our education system and you'll find it's very advanced. We could use exposure to more cultures and, as you said, what we know of Mandalore comes from the Haat'ade. You could show my people another side of your sector." Satine became more visibly interested as he spoke. "You won't be mingling with Core high society, but Alderaan has a strong presence and I could take you with me on my visits to Coruscant."

"...Why? Why do you want _me_ to stay?" 

Unspoken went that he'd only just met her, that she wanted to shatter his good opinion of his friends in the Haat'ade, that Melida-Daan was already very busy.

"Because we've tied our fate to part of Mandalore, and you, and your point of view, is part of that," he lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a:  
> (I kinda shoved some of the words together to make them seem like I just grabbed them out of a dictionary)  
> Lis'gar? - Can you?  
> Bal su cuy'Mando'ade? - And still be Mandalorians?


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked for Obi-Wan's age throughout the chapters, I can't really do that because the chapters sometimes span a lot of time, and sometimes one chapter starts before the chapter before it began, and all that other stuff that comes along with any form of non-chronological storytelling. However, I'll try to mention every once in awhile in chapter how old he is, since the passage of time has mostly been marked by major events which, in general, a lot of people don't actually know about because they were Legends canon.
> 
> Short chapter for some setup!

Since digging deep into the hazy balance of the Force to learn alchemy, Obi-Wan had found himself feeling...more of the world. Or perhaps it was that he felt it on a level he never had before. It took only a moment's concentration to feel the cells, the _atoms_ of what was around him.

Unsettling, because he knew that feeling them meant he could use them, change them, destroy them….

There were many, many monstrous activities that a Force Alchemist could participate in. He did not want to be a horror story to frighten younglings in the creche.

He could tell Nield and Cerasi, could explain in as much detail as possible, but they'd never really grasp it. For all they'd killed during the war, they didn't understand truly _destroying_ people.

Obi-Wan feared that at this time, so long before the war, with Galidraan and the Stark Hyperspace Wars mere shadows of what they had been, that the Sith might be the only ones who could understand him.

Not that they'd feel the steady thrum of caution (fear) he did over it.

***  
There were some Jedi that Obi-Wan desperately wished he could talk to. Who he missed like a piece of him had broken off and fallen away.

Reminding himself, near constantly, that he meant nothing to most of them didn't do much to alleviate the feeling.

He missed Mace's mocking commentary, which was mocking the situations Obi-Wan was in and the way the universe tested him more than Obi-Wan himself. 

He missed Adi's steadfastness and Plo's compassion. 

He even missed his competition with Kit as to whether he could lose more cloaks than the other lost shirts.

They were not bad people.

Or, no, they were not _worse_ people than Obi-Wan.

And he could really, really use someone else who understood the Force.

***

"Something's wrong."

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“No, Cerasi’s right, something’s wrong.”

Obi-Wan groaned, hiding his head under one of their too-many pillows and trying to ignore his co-rulers as they climbed into their bed to poke him in the sides. Was it possible to be fifteen and too old for this?

“It’s Force kriff,” he finally muttered, huffing out a soft laugh at their groans.

“That’s not fair, we can’t help you with that.”

Obi-Wan turned onto his back, rolling his eyes at them. “Boo hoo, cry harder.”

That, of course, was met with two separate pillows straight to his face.


	18. Chapter 18

Obi-Wan walked into the forge to find not just the Mando'ade he expected, but some of his own people, as well. More exactly, Kima and her cohort of trouble.

He froze, like a nexu caught in the glare of a speeder's lights. The last thing he needed was another wardrobe change.

When she looked up and saw him, the satisfied smirk almost made him turn around and walk away. If only there hadn't been an audience that might judge it as cowardly instead of the strategic retreat it would have been.

"Archon," they said, with varying levels of respect, as she motioned him over.

There were ancient flimsies scattered across a workbench, a few projectors paused at odd angles on historical looking figures. He frowned, glancing them over.

"Armor, now?"

"No one can get one over on you, Obi." Kima grabbed his arm, heedless of how the closest Mandalorian tensed, and dragged him over. "We can't just keep wearing whatever junk the Elders bought from spacers who were stupid enough to land here. We're no less a culture than anyone else!"

He diplomatically chose not to mention that the Mando'ade were, in fact, a significantly older and more prestigious culture, as he could tell a few of them were thinking. 

"I've discussed it with Nield," of course she had, "and you're going to get the first set," of course he was, "since you can evaluate what's effective." 

And...yes, he could see how that made sense. As much as he didn’t want to be the constant test subject for Kima’s historical experiments, he was often the best candidate.

Still….”What I need from armor and what others would are two different things.”

She just shrugged. “So we’ll shove a Mando in a suit, too, and see what they say.”

One of the Mandalorians present laughed at that, which probably earned him the "honor." Obi-Wan was shoved forward again to look at the sketches and diagrams arranged for his newest acquisition.

The armor of the Melida and Daan shared much in common, the differences smoothed over by Kima’s careful designs. The pieces seemed to be designed to protect the more vulnerable parts that could be exposed to blasterfire from the front and back, instead of melee damage from the sides, but with the right armorweave Obi-Wan didn’t think that would be a bad thing--it meant more mobility for him.

It was less boxy than beskar’gam, following the lines of a body, and the helmet was blessedly translucent at the front, as opposed to the buy’ce which was near-impossible to see out of if the HUD failed.

“We’ll start with the chest piece and go from there,” Kima said, running a stylus over the long item, which went from neck down between the legs, just wide enough to cover the front and a touch to the sides of the torso.

Obi-Wan found himself tracing parts of it, too, notably the well-guarded neck, as he remembered Jango’s death in the last life. Perhaps just as the Mandalorians would surely convince them to adopt some of their stylings, he could do the same for them.

***

There was a part of Obi-Wan which might not have entirely been just the teenager that was soaking up the looks he got when he finally tried out the armor. Oh, he knew most of them weren't appreciative of anything his awful young mind could come up with, but it was flattering nonetheless.

As many flaws as there were, he couldn't say it wasn't striking. And useful, of course, that was exactly why all the other Young were now clamoring for sets of their own.

Since they were all still so young, and growing, the armor technically would belong to the government and not them. As they grew, they'd get new pieces and someone smaller would get their old pieces.

When they were full grown, and probably had a more reliable idea of the custom changes they wanted, they'd get their own.

It was, Obi-Wan thought, a good lesson on attachment that none of the Young actually needed and the Mandalorians could have benefited from. Not that he'd ever say that to any of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shape wise, I'm thinking something along the lines of Heleus Champion Armor from ME:A, basically.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These parts take place over a decent period of time, not back to back.

They met in a neutral station, one where Offworld Mining had no ties. Obi-Wan had four of the more intimidating Middle Generation guards with him, though he knew if anyone pulled anything, he was the only one with the experience to deal with it.

Xanatos was waiting at a table set for two in the most expensive restaurant there, looking perfectly at place in the surroundings. Not that Obi-Wan looked out of place anymore, either.

The lazy, dangerous grin he received when he took his seat couldn't have put him more on edge. "It's so good to see you again, little brother," Xanatos purred the title more like an insult than a relationship.

"So sorry to pull you away from attacking the Temple." The slight narrowing of eyes Obi-Wan's comment caused was more amusing than he'd admit to. "Truly, I thought you couldn't sink lower than enslaving twelve year olds, but you never cease to surprise...big brother."

Xanatos was watching him now with the caution of someone aware of a change he hadn't expected. Which was fair enough, because to him they'd last seen each other not all that long ago and the Obi-Wan of then would have not been able to sit across from him at a table, calmly perusing a menu as they discussed Xanatos' crimes.

"I suppose I should be in a better mood," Xanatos finally said, after they'd ordered and were once more given the illusion of privacy. "How our former Master must feel, seeing another of his failed students becoming so much more than he could have made them."

Obi-Wan took a drink to give himself time to wrestle his emotions into a semblance of peace. He'd meditated for days over what Xanatos would bring up, both on his own and by his mere presence, but that didn't stop the faint feeling of betrayal--both as the betrayer and the betrayed--that came upon him now.

"Hopefully there won't be any more Padawans given over to him, and it will remain just the two of us." Xanatos' eyes widened, just a touch, before he made a motion of cheering with his drink in agreement. "And as it happens, big brother, now that I've found myself in a very different situation...I've also found myself with very different enemies. A few _you_ might share."

***

Dooku was much easier to approach. They had never met in this lifetime, of course, not formally (and one could argue they were barely connected by his brief stint as Qui-Gon's Padawan) and yet they _were_ connected by being in the very small group of former Jedi who were current planetary leaders.

Serenno was not exactly useful to Obi-Wan, Xanatos' connections, while tainted, would serve Melida-Daan better, but this was preparing for the future.

If he could not stop the Separatist movement, he would drag his system into neutrality knowing Dooku would allow it to stay that way, if he played his cards right.

It was helpful, as well, that Dooku had only just left. He had cut his ties, tempted by forbidden knowledge, but even with a planet to call his own he'd have to be feeling adrift.

To have been a Jedi for so long and then just...not be one, it was a daunting experience.

Obi-Wan played that up for himself, made sad eyes and cute faces. He was getting old enough that soon they wouldn't work as well (though if he didn't grow out his facial hair, he'd always look younger than he was), so he had to take full advantage now.

Even the most Darkened former Jedi Master would see a lost Padawan and _feel_ something, so that's what Obi-Wan would give to Dooku until he had a firmer hold over the man.

***

Rael Aveross was not a former Jedi (technically). But he was a member of what would have been Obi-Wan's lineage and had many things Obi-Wan wanted.

Control of the anchor world of a nearly developing hyperspace corridor, for one.

Obi-Wan was far past claiming a good Jedi didn't feel any hate (and far passed pretending he was trying to be a good Jedi) and having now had a Padawan, having been faced with killing that Padawan...he found Aveross' actions even more repugnant. If Anakin had been in that situation, had been attacking because he wasn't in control of his own body, Obi-Wan would have found a way to stop him without murdering him.

Even when Anakin had been in control, as an adult Knight, had committed atrocities beyond belief, Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to kill his former Padawan.

But Rael was also already on his way to failing his megalomaniac charge, so Obi-Wan felt no reason not to step in. Pijal might take longer to reach the democratic freedom it had, but it would also avoid that brief civil war if Obi-Wan had anything to say about it.

Fanry was clearly relieved when they spoke over holo--Melida-Daan was proof positive that children could rule in even extreme circumstances, outside of the tightly controlled environments of systems like Naboo. 

Rael, meanwhile, watched him with such a look Obi-Wan could not identify--he thought part of it might be _vindication_ , after he was told how Qui-Gon had left Obi-Wan alone and weaponless in a warzone and never returned. Was their line always destined to fail their Padawans? If Obi-Wan could somehow look into it more deeply, would he find how Yoda had blatantly failed Dooku at some point, as well?

It was no matter, he told himself, focusing back on his plans. What the Jedi did or didn't do had to be pushed aside--Obi-Wan was helping the whole galaxy, that included the Order, but they couldn't be his priority.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've fudged a little of the timeline, as far as how long it was between Xanatos' attack on the Temple and his death and when Dooku left the Order, I'm planning on writing up a post for the Tumblr (that I'll link in a chapter here) of a few other timeline changes I made because of logistics.
> 
> I'm also thinking of doing a sort of per chapter notes thing where I go more into depth on some of the canon/Legends content that's less obvious to people.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So to go into detail and also because I started getting windy about my own thoughts, I've decided to try to do basically "director's commentary" on the chapters to further explain some of the canon and stuff that I discuss in them. They're on my melida-daan tumblr, [under the #enl-commentary tag](https://melida-daan.tumblr.com/tagged/enl-commentary). I've done the first two chapters so far.

Obi-Wan watched the blue, sparkling polish covering his nails under Roenni’s careful ministrations. She’d somehow procured a few bottles in various colors from one of the Naboo and had caught nearly every member of the Young at some point.

He was fairly sure the current visitors assumed it was a cultural affectation and he wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t become one. It was pretty.

“Are you even listening?” Cerasi sighed from above him, where she was taking up nearly the entire couch he leaned back against.

“Yes, of course. I’m just confused why we’re discussing it here, instead of at work.”

Roenni made a face. “He’s right, this is office stuff. We’re supposed to be having a fun night watching holovids Nield and Taun hate.”

With his free hand, Obi-Wan motioned to her in agreement, but Cerasi just rolled her eyes. “We need to be a united front against Nield on this, you know that. So we need to come up with our plan of attack where he won’t find us.”

“Do you honestly think he won’t agree?”

“He thinks we’re too spread out as it is. I think he’s been spending too much time with the Naboo,” Roenni pursed her lips and very clearly didn’t say anything at that, “even some of the ones that come here are isolationists. He’d put up shield generators around the whole system and lock us down if he could.”

Maybe. Nield was more than mature enough to understand the threat of what was coming and just what their opponents could do.

“Some, say, Outer Rim solidarity could go a long way in protecting us. And the others aren’t wrong, _you’re_ not wrong. It’s one thing to accept freed people, but we could be doing more. We could be actively freeing them.”

Cerasi leaned down, hanging off the couch, her face right next to Obi-Wan’s. “Exactly. And we can get funding for it from Alderaan and their allies, so it’s not as though we’d be pressed for resources. They’ve got the money, but can’t make any major moves because of,” she wrinkled her nose, “politics.”

He kissed that adorable nose, leaning away from her swatting hands. “If it makes you feel better, you’re right. Roenni agrees.”

She made a noise. “I do, but don’t tell Nield. I’ve got this new pink polish that glows in the dark with his name on it.”

***

He wanted to start on Tatooine, even though he knew they couldn’t. It called to him, the twin suns beating down on him sometimes when he closed his eyes. 

The planet and _Anakin_. Who was his brother more than Xanatos could ever be, certainly. 

He’d already decided, or at least he thought he had, that he would see Anakin had enough training to shield himself and then put he and his mother somewhere out of the way and safe. As long as Anakin was in play, others would try to tempt him to their side. The Jedi were too easily influenced by the Sith at this point and he certainly couldn’t risk the Sith getting him.

As much as he wanted a second chance to do _right_ by Anakin and Shmi, he’d had his closure with the man he’d known and couldn’t bring a child into these schemes.

***

Out of all the opposition Obi-Wan had expected, having Jango Fett trying to talk him out of it was somehow a surprise.

He’d forgotten that in this world Jango had never been enslaved. There were no faint scars left from shackles and lashes, no Slave I. 

“You’re making enemies of the Trade Federation and Czerka Corp, and now you want to go after the Hutts, too?”

Obi-Wan sighed. “This is not a matter we need your opinion on, Mand’alor.”

Jango was silent long enough that it was clear he was cursing inside of his head. “Our contract is expiring.”

“Which you wanted, as well, Jango. You need your whole fighting force in your own sector. You’ve trained our military and security forces, you’ve seen that we’re competent.”

His gloved hands opened and closed at his sides, Obi-Wan watching the movement but not commenting on it. 

“You’re still too vulnerable," he said, voice forcefully calm-sounding. "Even better established, more secure planets would be.”

“We appreciate your concern--”

“Stop that. I’m not talking to the _Triarchy_ , I’m talking to _you_ , Obi-Wan. You’re being reckless and you know it.”

He leaned back in his seat, shedding emotions into the Force almost as soon as he felt them. “I’m seventeen. I’ve been co-ruling a planet for years. I know what the risk is, we all do. The Melida-Daan want this.” Narrowing his eyes, he added, “And our people know enough about your people’s history by now not to be particularly trusting when it comes to issues like slavery.”

Jango rocked back and Obi-Wan knew that was cruel--he might be a traditionalist, but he wasn’t a slaver. Although, some of the Melida-Daan would say he was close enough, supporting the systems of slavery through contracts from some of the individuals and corporations who used slaves. Where, exactly, complacency should be taken as fault, Obi-Wan did not think he had the right to decide.

“I appreciate your concern, _I do_ , but it’s not going to change anything. I don’t want your contract to end with us fighting. Please, Jango, just...accept this is something we need to do.”

The acceptance was resigned more than anything and not for the first time Obi-Wan wished Jango’s shields weren’t so strong. Even moreso when Satine walked in moments later, glowing with determination, to offer her assistance.


	21. Interlude

When Satine first came to Melida-Daan, she could admit she didn’t think much of it. Even if they weren’t so obviously allied with Jango Fett, the leaders were harsh and wild in ways that reminded her too much of some of the clan-raised children she had to deal with back home. 

They were nothing like what Satine _wanted_ to be, nothing like the quiet dignity of the New Mandalorians she’d known, which she tried to emulate.

Her father thought Fett was their future, when it was so, so obvious he was their past. And their past had failed them, over and over again Mandalore had fallen. They were not a great warrior culture, they were the remnants of people who _lost_.

But she stayed, because the offer was a kind one and she knew her arguments with her father and Fett over going to school on Coruscant would just make it more difficult for her to have more freedom later. 

The school on Melida-Daan was _good_ , too, the Alderaanians and Naboo had spared no expense helping them rebuild their education system. It was still based on skill levels instead of ages, maybe would always be, and so Satine was with mostly older people from what they called the “Middle Generation.”

Talking with them was...an experience. Their culture was war-based, but not like Mandalore’s, and not in a way that they were either proud of or despaired for. It just was. They’d lost so much, some of them had lost everything short of their lives, but what they focused on wasn’t that fighting was bad, but that who was in power mattered.

She supposed she could understand that. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she disliked Fett so much? He was arrogant and aggressive, flaunting his dominance as Mand’alor wherever he went.

The Melida-Daan Triarchy wasn’t like that, they were absolute monarchs but no one actually seemed to think of them that way. When she asked, the Melida-Daan couldn’t explain it in any way an outsider would understand.

Except as the years she’d thought she’d have on Coruscant were instead spent on Melida-Daan, she did start to understand. None of the Archons ever treated the average citizens they ran into like they were above them. They ruled seemingly because someone had to, not because they necessarily wanted the power. 

For as much as she was a foreign diplomat of a sort, Satine spent much of her time with Cerasi. They worked on relief and rebuilding together, all the things she wanted to do on Mandalore so frustratingly easy to implement on Melida-Daan where the divisions of just a few years ago had been almost completely forgotten.

Nield she saw more for philosophical conversations than actual work. He was the center of a brand new bureaucracy and she had learned much of how the New Mandalorians ran theirs and seen her own father at work with their House’s business. He understood wanting to tear down the past and start anew, but he was tempered by the others, and believed that made him a better leader for it.

The only time she really spent with Obi-Wan, the only Coruscanti on Melida-Daan, was when they traveled to Coruscant itself to visit the Senate. He was surprisingly well-informed, even for a former Jedi, and easily inserted himself into conversations with the Senators and other world leaders. Under his guidance, she carefully started to do the same, trusting in him to steer her away from the ones who might take advantage. It was so hard to remember he was younger than her, no matter how some of the adult politicians they met treated him.

When she had spare time, she documented what they were doing, how it could work on Mandalore or what adjustments might be needed. She grew closer to the Naboo representatives who never seemed to leave once they’d arrived. She learned of cultures from around the Outer Rim through the freed Melida-Daan and the spacers who so often visited. She even, tentatively, got to know some of the Haat’ade who had decided to call Melida-Daan their home after their contract ended. 

It was clear this _wasn’t_ the experience she would have gotten if she’d moved to Coruscant, but she couldn’t imagine having ever wanted anything else.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a week trying to get the chapter that was supposed to go here to cooperate, but it wouldn't, so instead I moved up this one.

Obi-Wan's first thought upon seeing Tyvokka was 'he's not as tall as I remember,' followed by the correction that Obi-Wan had experienced a growth spurt Tyvokka had not survived to see in the last timeline. It was a sobering thought he quickly pushed aside.

He was still huge, of course, as few but a Wookie could be, intimidating even without the great lightsaber strapped to his side and the air of authority.

"We welcome you to Melida-Daan, Master Tyvokka."

***

After Qui-Gon, it seemed the guards had made some rules of their own for dealing with Jedi, especially Jedi with Obi-Wan. Before he’d been thankful to never have a moment with just Qui-Gon, but now he truly wished to be able to take a walk through one of the parks without a guard right behind him.

Tyvokka, at least, accepted it all with a knowing look. “I wish they did not see a Jedi as a threat to you, but I understand why they might,” he said, Shyriiwook cutting through the quiet tension.

“Do you?” He still wasn’t sure exactly what Qui-Gon had told the Council in this lifetime.

“You should not have been left here,” Tyvokka replied, voice pitching to show his displeasure. “And someone should have been dispatched immediately to retrieve you, upon Qui-Gon Jinn first contacting the Temple.”

Obi-Wan wasn’t going to argue either of those points, he would have never left a thirteen year old on Melida/Daan during the war and if, for some reason, he had to, he would have immediately gotten someone else to rescue them. “And why wasn’t someone sent?”

The slightest of growls rumbled from the Wookie Master. “We were unaware of just how dire your situation was. Once we _were_ , you had already won the war here.”

“All of you? The entire Council?”

He wasn’t _trying_ to spread strife and distrust, he just wanted the Jedi, especially those in power, to start looking more deeply at what the Order was doing. The Jedi were more than just the Council, more than the Senate requests, more than Yoda or whoever else felt like pulling strings that day. 

“Reports of you are not wrong, Archon,” Tyvokka said, instead of answering, “you are wise far beyond your years.” Or maybe it was an answer.

***

Along with Tyvokka came a holo from his crechemates, or, at least, from Bant, Reeft, and Garen. Obi-Wan watched it in private, fingers tracing the edges of their forms. 

***

“So, that’s the Jedi you needed to save?” Nield was doing a good job at hiding how impressed he was with Master Tyvokka.

“Yes, that’s him. He died during that ‘meeting’ with Stark in the last timeline.”

Frowning as he watched Tyvokka moving among the small children in the nearby square (ignoring the brightly colored chalk getting in his fur), Nield was most likely trying to remember what Obi-Wan had told him about it.

“Why him?”

“Tyvokka has a very strong ability to understand what the future might bring. Even as clouded as the Force is growing for the Jedi on Coruscant, he still knew that the bacta shortage was purposefully done. Beyond that, he’s established enough on the Council that he’ll actually be willing to push against the worst rulings or odder requests.” 

And some part of him, maybe, wanted to spare Plo an earlier loss than he had to face--they’d probably never be friends in this lifetime, but Obi-Wan would be attempting to stop any sort of Clone Army from developing and he felt a little guilty about depriving Plo of his future surrogate children.

“So, he goes in the Good Jedi column?”

“...The what?”

Nield at least had the presence of mind to look abashed. “Of the security procedures for your guards. So far he’s...possibly the only one in that column.”

***

A week into his stay on Melida-Daan, Tyvokka finally seemed prepared to address the obvious. “That is a Force imbued sword you carry, is it not?”

“It is.”

Tyvokka looked down at him, cocking his head to the side to acknowledge that Obi-Wan was being purposefully vague in his answer, avoiding giving its origins. “You’ve never used it against a lightsaber, have you?”

Taking a deep breath, Obi-Wan glanced at the giant hilt at Tyvokka’s side, and shook his head. “No. I would greatly appreciate the chance to practice, if you are willing.”

***

The great lightsaber that Tyvokka used made Obi-Wan’s sword look tiny in comparison. As far as Obi-Wan could remember, Tyvokka was one of the few in this time who had one, though there was a display of some historical ones in the Temple--even others of large stature had preferred more classic lightsabers or staves.

From the power behind each blow that Obi-Wan blocked, he thought they might be missing out. He was doing his best _not_ to block most of them in the traditional manner, instead to dodge, to flow with the momentum of the swings. His smaller stature was not as much of a benefit as it could have been, because Tyvokka was used to sparring opponents of all sizes. 

In the background, he could hear some of the observers making jokes about the size of Tyvokka’s “lightsaber” and spared a moment to roll his eyes, getting a laugh from Tyvokka in return. A very small number of Padawans and Knights might have been willing to make such a suggestive joke, but inside the Temple it wouldn’t have been made in front of the Master in question.

He remained unflappable, though, Jedi calm radiating off of him as Obi-Wan did his best to project something similar, bright Light hiding any hints of Darkness (a trick he had learned, he realized with a start that almost made him miss a dodge, from Anakin).

Now, years after he’d left the Order, he didn’t feel the need to hold back as much during fights with people who’d _know_ he was unusually talented for his age, but he still expertly threw the match. Tyvokka should be winning, even if Obi-Wan _could_ win (despite his shaking muscles and near-numb arms), it was still too big of a risk.

Let the galaxy underestimate him, still. And especially the Jedi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Great lightsabers are a thing--they're really big lightsabers that really large wielders might use. Tyvokka, canonically, had one.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I created a [Discord for my fics/discussion and Alpha-17 appreciation!](https://discord.gg/j8F4Pz)

The Gungans pulled out all of the stops for the representatives of the Naboo and Obi-Wan, as a neutral party invited along, had more fun than he’d expected. Without war looming over them, without a mission gone sour clouding his mind, he could appreciate the beauty of their cities and the energy of their culture.

Queen Zeynia seemed to be enjoying herself, as well. She was quieter than Ekay had been, less ready to throw herself into the middle of things as Padme would be, but she was the sort of peacetime Queen that the Naboo and the Gungans could benefit from.

In another time, she had lost the re-election to King Veruna and Obi-Wan couldn’t help but be thankful that Naboo had dodged that bullet for once. 

This was the first of many peace talks that Obi-Wan had pushed Ekay towards--she hadn’t had the time left in her reign to see them forward, but it was clear she’d influenced Zeynia effectively. 

A world could not claim it was peaceful if two peoples on it were at best ignoring one another and at worst breaking into war every few centuries.

It didn’t hurt that the Naboo could certainly benefit in the coming years from integrating Gungan shield technology into their own cities, though he hadn’t told either of the Queens that.

***

Joli, somehow, ended up talking a young Gungan into showing him the underwaterways and Obi-Wan just managed to throw himself into the sub before it took off. It wasn’t that he didn’t _trust_ them (he didn’t), it was that he didn’t want to face Cerasi’s wrath if he came home without Joli because he’d been eaten by a sea monster.

He hadn’t flown anything for so long. As he pushed the Gungan out of the way to take over the controls, letting the Force guide his piloting, he felt that old excitement for it rising up in him.

In this timeline, he’d never had the Pijal mission, had never lived through the terrifying ordeal of flying a fighter through a ship, and it seemed like instead he was remembering that he _really liked flying_.

Joli and the Gungan girl weren’t helping, when he mentioned turning around to head back to the party they begged him to keep going and...he did.

Flying like this, with two excited kids, reminded him of some of his better times with Anakin. Some of their less serious adventures during his Padawan years when they could just let go and have fun for a few hours. The Force around them soaring with their good moods.

He’d had to keep most of that out of their reports to the Council, ever worried they might decide he wasn’t an appropriate Master for Anakin, but now there was no such worry. None of the Gungans would say anything against their little escapade and he was a planetary leader himself, reporting only to his peers.

Obi-Wan was never the sort who sought power, but he had grown to regretfully appreciate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This includes my continued attempts to say "fuck you, Veruna and all the people writing nonsensical canon for Naboo monarchs" lol


	24. Chapter 24

Obi-Wan kept doing his best to avoid the Core when he could, leveraging being "too young to be taken seriously on Coruscant" throughout his teens. That meant delegating much of the work with Republic politics to others and taking on most of the less savory tasks for himself.

And that meant he was near constantly faced with one of the worst types of people in the galaxy--slavers.

***

Llanic was a small Outer Rim planet, just on the edge of the Mid-Rim with decent trade routes. The only feature of note was that it was a infamous shadow port for smugglers and other ne'er-do-wells. Obi-Wan had passed through it a few times, mostly during his Padawan days when Qui-Gon would forget exactly what was appropriate for an apprentice to witness, but it had not left a strong impression.

One of the hyperlanes that ran through the sector, after all, was called the “Llanic Spice Route.”

But as the closest major illicit port to Melida-Daan, it now held a lot of his attention.

Many of the weapons and other supplies that weren’t made on-planet during the civil war had come through Llanic. And many of the Melida and Daan who had managed to flee had ended up there, some still trapped in dead-end jobs or indentured servitude. Some, now slaves.

That didn’t sit well with the Triarchs or anyone else in the government, for that matter. 

When Obi-Wan arrived to meet with the governor, he wasn’t surprised to find a greedy, ineffectual being held that role. He had hoped, at the very least, the governor would hold some power Obi-Wan could leverage to bargain for the freedom of the Melida-Daan citizens, but the longer he listened to them go on and on without ever giving Obi-Wan even information of worth, he knew he’d been wrong.

And that he would have to take things into his own hands.

***

Obi-Wan was wearing his armor off-planet for the first time. The armor was painted sleek navy and bronze, the colors of the Melida and Daan of old, and fit perfectly to the body he knew (regretfully) wouldn't be doing anymore growing. It had taken him a long time to wear it easily, unused to such restrictive gear, but he appreciated it now.

He hadn't avoided armor in his last life because he thought it unnecessary, but because he thought it conflicted with what it meant to be a Jedi. A peacekeeper.

In this life, he was certainly no Jedi.

His sword rested at his side, blasters strapped to his thighs, and there was even a small slugthrower--in the event of facing down some Force user with a lightsaber--tucked away among the many curves and angles of the plating. He felt more like a warrior than he ever had before and, despite his stature and build, could feel how imposing a figure he was to those he walked by. 

There were a handful of Mandalorians with them, the ones who had stayed based on Melida-Daan and were as much citizens now as anyone else, and their approval was particularly strong. He was sure a holo or two would be finding their way to Jango soon enough.

Obi-Wan was relying on a lot of technicalities for how they were going to pull this off--technically, the governor had shown himself incapable of enforcing Republic law and the Melida-Daan citizens that were enslaved (also, technically, illegal within Republic space) had sometimes been minors, meaning their protection fell to Melida-Daan itself to enforce, if the local government couldn’t.

Not that the Republic really cared about what two Outer Rim planets only nominally under their control did if it wasn’t interrupting official business or trade. Especially since Llanic didn’t have the political strength to bring the issue through the courts or to the attention of the Senate. 

Llanic also didn’t have much in the way of security forces--the few they did have fell easily to the small assault force of Melida-Daan that descended on the cities. Some of the smugglers and others had better security, hired bodyguards or bounty hunters they hurriedly made offers to as the blaster bolts started filling the streets. 

Obi-Wan stuck to blasters, each fitting in his hands with ease after so much practice, the Force guiding his shots (almost always set to stun, except when someone felt particularly vile in the Force) between plates of armor, around barriers, he was even able to make a few ricochet off of the personal shields to take out the bodyguards of one of the better supplied slavers.

It was...exhilarating. As a Jedi, he never wanted to admit how easily he fell into fighting, how the Force flowed through him and guided him as if it was what he’d been _made_ for. Now, he was a little more circumspect, and aware that the Force may actually mean this for him. Some people were true peacekeepers, some people could get away with being pacifists, but Obi-Wan in any life seemed to have been meant for battlefields.

At least he could comfort himself this time with the knowledge there would be few deaths and most of those would almost certainly be the slavers they were targeting. Those sentients had taken advantage of people desperately fleeing a war zone, after all, and probably had done far worse than that over the years.

***

When the dust settled over Llanic, the governor had resigned, half the infrastructure was destroyed, and there was significantly less spice in the galaxy.

There were also fewer slaves.

Some of the Freed who had accompanied Obi-Wan from Melida-Daan were handling processing the newly Freed there--they knew what to say, how to act, after all. Any chips, collars, or similar devices were being removed by medics as quickly as they could be and until then communications were almost entirely blocked, just in case there were remote detonators somewhere (Obi-Wan had come up with that, remembering too well his collar on Bandomeer, the small band of scarring around his neck still there at this age).

The surviving smugglers and others who hadn’t taken a side against the Melida-Daan were crawling out of the rocks they’d hidden under and settling back into the cantinas and brothels as though nothing had changed. For them, Obi-Wan supposed that was true.

He, on the other hand, was now faced with the task of finding an appropriate puppet governor and garrisoning an entire planet until it had the strength to enforce the more important Republic laws. There was always a catch when doing the right thing.


	25. Chapter 25

“So,” Obi-Wan began, narrowing his eyes across the bed at Cerasi. 

Nield, already lying down, groaned and dug his way deeper under the covers. “Whatever this is about, I want no part of it.”

That gained him an eye roll from Cerasi which, even though he didn’t see, Nield surely knew happened, especially given the rude gesture he stuck his hand out to make.

“Yes, Obi-Wan?” Cerasi gave a sweet, innocent smile that none of them believed.

He shifted, glancing between the lump of Nield on the bed and Cerasi, who was still in the process of stripping down to put on her nightclothes. “You’re...spending a lot of time with Satine.”

Cerasi sucked in a breath, then made a show of giving a careless shrug. “She’s okay, I guess. Once she started getting over herself.”

Obi-Wan and Nield, peeking out from the covers, looked at each other and she rolled her eyes at them. “Kriff you both, it’s not like that.”

***

Cerasi and Satine spent a _lot_ of time together. Sometimes it was for projects where their duties intersected, but oftentimes Satine could be found working with Cerasi on items that were outside the scope of her commitment to Melida-Daan. It clearly wasn’t out of boredom, or a need to prove herself, and everyone had concluded it was so they would spend even more time together.

Seeing a version of the girl he loved with Cerasi was...odd for Obi-Wan. He wanted them to have the happy ending he had never gotten, but he also worried about how their duties might separate them. In this lifetime, torn from the grasping hands of the New Mandalorians, Satine wasn’t set to inherit anything more than the Duchy on Kalevala that her father now ruled (and, perhaps, he would live much longer than he had before). It was Cerasi who had the greater duty, who might end up believing that a relationship with Satine couldn’t work because of her own commitments.

So Obi-Wan did what he could, both to find loopholes for Satine (she _did_ have a sister, after all, who could inherit, and a Clan far larger than it had been in the last lifetime, after being nearly wiped out by Kyr’tsad) and to alleviate some of Cerasi’s worries about succession.

Which in itself, for the Triarchy, was something they needed to make clear and defined, regardless. Obi-Wan would do everything in his power to keep all of them alive, but as they pushed out farther into the galaxy, as they began to gain more influence in the Senate, life would become even more dangerous.

***

It was Nield who first approached Satine about her feelings. It must have been...intense, because when Obi-Wan invited her to join him at lunch, she audibly groaned.

But she came along with him, to a local restaurant with Alderaanian food and a peaceful atmosphere.

“Is this where you talk about how easy it is for you to fake accidents and hide bodies?” she asked, bold as any Mandalorian might be.

He chuckled, sinking into his seat, doing his best to project calm in his mannerisms, since he knew she couldn’t _feel_ it around him. “No, that’s the dirty work Nield does.”

“Which implies you do some other sort?”

“You should already know that, if you’ve been paying attention.”

Her lips pursed, then she gave a quick, tight nod. “It’s harder here, even as...monarchs?” she suggested, but he shrugged, because they hadn’t ever defined it in terms that would make sense to outsiders. “Even on poor planets in the Outer Rim, the people in charge still live the lives of the rich and influential. They let other people take care of their dirty work, for the most part.”

“Even on Manda’yaim?” The question left him before he could think better of it, but he didn’t try to soften the implications.

She flinched, but rose to the challenge. “The New Mandalorians...they’ve ruled for two centuries but...things aren’t much better for the average Mandalorian. They’ve had the backing of the Republic, they’ve had the money from the beskar mines, and they’ve done less in _two hundred years_ than you’ve done in a handful.”

“I thought you liked them? Their philosophies?”

“I did,” she agreed, shoulders slumping for just a moment before she straightened up, the aristocratic air of confidence he remembered from the last life still a part of her. “And they’re not wrong that violence doesn’t solve problems. But...culture is something to be cherished and I realize it’s...we’re lucky, in our Sector, how much we’ve all managed to retain. I didn’t realize that until I got here, until I saw how hard you all had to work just to find out what your culture _was_.”

These were words the old Satine would have never said, not by this age, and they loosened the tension inside of him that Obi-Wan was just realizing had been guiding him. Cerasi’s heart breaking would be a tragedy, but he was less worried about that now than he’d been.

“Your father has thrown his lot in with Fett, will you?”

Satine stared down at her food, giving the question the lengthy consideration it deserved. “Is that what you want to hear? Your allies, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “We are, technically. But we’re not getting involved in your Sector’s politics and we can’t know how good a leader Fett actually is, from a Mandalorian perspective.”

Better than he had been, that was certain, but that wasn’t saying much. Sometimes Obi-Wan worried about just how much help he’d inadvertently given the Haat’ade, wondered if he shouldn’t encourage some alternative group to the three current factions instead, but he knew it would be a foolish endeavor. There might have been a version of him that could focus on Mandalore, could help it become something wonderful, but that wasn’t him.

“I think...out of all the choices, he’s the only one that makes sense. My father wishes Mereel had lived and though I never knew him, I can agree with that from what I know. But Fett...he wants to be a real Mand’alor, not just for his own power, but to see the Mando’ade flourish again.”

“And if the Mand’alor calls upon you?”

“I would,” she said, tense and sure, “rally to him.”

“And if the Mand’alor would call upon you against Melida-Daan?”

Satine’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “I would not be the only one putting forth a challenge.”

The truth rang through the Force.

Obi-Wan smiled and nodded. “Then good luck raising warriors with Cerasi,” he teased, enjoying the way her pale cheeks flushed at the very serious consideration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a:  
> Kyr'tsad - Death Watch, an extremist group of traditional Mandalorians  
> Manda'yaim - the planet Mandalore  
> Mando'ade - Mandalorians  
> Mand'alor - the sole ruler (of the traditional Mandalorians)
> 
> Answering the call of the Mand'alor is a part of the Resol'nare, the tenants that traditional Mandalorians live by.
> 
> "Raising warriors" is a reference to both the Resol'nare and the Mandalorian marriage vows.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was, no joke, one of the first chapters I wrote. I think it was originally like the 7th chapter and I kept pushing it back and pushing it back as the fic got longer and more involved haha
> 
> If you'd like to discuss this or any of my other fics (and get early spoilers and snippets!), check out [my fanfic (and Alpha-17 fanclub) discord](https://discord.gg/YCgQqGx)!

The Cadavine Sector wasn't a large one. Tucked away and often out of mind for most of the galaxy because most of the planets were inhabitable.

One of the few occupied planets, Eos, was just on the knife's edge of what most sentient species could survive and had a touchy electromagnetic field, which made it perfectly fine for a Trade Federation factory planet. 

Technically, as their closest occupied neighbor, and due to a large swath of ancient Republic laws that were never taken off the books for the sector that Nield dug up with a disturbing amount of glee, Melida-Daan should have been given the right of first refusal for the planet. Normally, no one would care (often the increased spacer traffic in these far off areas tempted systems to agree to the Trade Federation being nearby).

Obi-Wan, though, did care--in the years to come, Eos was where the droids that assaulted Naboo would be built. 

Instead, it was now the subject of an absolutely vicious legal battle which included, but was not limited to, vague Mandalorian threats, an uptick in piracy along previously protected parts of the sector (though, conveniently, only towards Trade Federation ships), and a not small amount of mind tricks coming from random Melida-Daan who, as far as anyone knew, weren't even Force sensitive.

Kima said it was the most fun she’d had in the Senate since she’d been forced into her position.

“I thought the representative from the Trade Federation was going to _explode_ he was so angry! Dor--he just got brought on as an aide, remember?--he said the Force felt hilarious, too, half the Senate panicking and the other half trying not to laugh.”

All of her holos from that time were the same, some including surreptitiously taken holos of some of her colleagues in the Senate while they were making weird faces. One had even passed out at some point.

Obi-Wan almost wished he was there on Coruscant, for the first time in years.

***

The battle took the better part of a year, the precedent it would set catching the attention of many other planets across the Republic. But Melida-Daan had been preparing for it, Nield and others collecting the laws and documents necessary, forming a plan of attack carefully, and the Trade Federation was fumbling to catch up, even with all their resources, all their money.

There was a certain pleasure in watching that, in being able to point to them and tell the galaxy, “See? Your riches don’t matter. The Republic _can_ work for the lesser systems.” They wouldn’t be able to pull another attack like this one again, not and have it be so effective, but that wouldn’t stop others from picking up where Melida-Daan would leave off.

***

Their success with Eos brought about another factor that Obi-Wan hadn't been expecting--all of the (very few) inhabited worlds in their sector with governments, and a handful of those were little more than stop over spots for spacers and pirates, reached out to the Triarchy.

Obi-Wan, Cerasi, and Nield had, of course, been ready to assist how they could. They still weren't a rich system by any stretch, but they were clever enough with the resources they had and in possession of a great many connections that could be used in creative ways.

Except it wasn't help, strictly speaking, that the others were asking for.

"They...want the Triarchy of Melida-Daan to become the Triarchy of the Cadavine Sector."

"We'd become sector rulers. Rulers of an entire sector, not just a system, or a few systems. The people who rule a sector," Nield muttered, like a droid on the fritz. 

Cerasi just shrugged. "Couldn't be harder than anything else we're planning on doing."

Obi-Wan had to concede that point. “Except we’ll have to rethink our entire system for ruling. The Triarchy is based on Melida-Daan. Eventually the rest of the sector would resent that.”

“So? Anyone can come here and gain citizenship, they don’t have to leave their old one, or old culture, behind.”

In the end, Nield and Obi-Wan ended up conceding to Cerasi’s points. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure why she was invested in their ruling the sector and worried that there were perhaps plots in her mind that she wasn’t sharing, but he couldn’t begrudge her that--he still kept information that wasn’t safe to himself.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want spoilers, discussion, and other news about ENL or any of my fics, I've got [my discord server (/Alpha-17 fanclub)!](https://discord.gg/W3BUsdT)
> 
> Thanks for everyone that's been commenting recently! <3 I've been kind of shit at replying to comments and apologize if I've missed responding to any!

It didn’t rain like this on Melida-Daan.

The thought occurred to Obi-Wan in a moment, as he strode through the torrential storm, his guards fanned out behind him and the two carrying the cases of samples. No one moved there for the climate, but the more he traveled, the more he was reminded that it actually wasn’t that bad.

He’d have to get that added to the tourist blurbs.

They reached the door, finding no resistance, and stepped through. He hadn’t exactly wanted to appear in armor like some fighting force, but was glad he’d done it if only because it kept him dry underneath. The muted Force presences of the others behind him confirmed they were in agreement, now that they were inside and could see the rivulets of water falling from them.

“Archon,” a Kaminoan he didn’t recognize bowed their head to him in greeting. “Welcome to Tipoca City. We have been expecting you.”

He nodded back, allowing himself to be led towards a meeting room--different than the first time he’d come here, a lifetime ago, though he knew the whole city must be different. It had not yet become the processing plant for millions of clones created and raised to be soldiers. If he had it his way, it never would.

***

The idea had been Nield’s.

“Kamino is a major part of the plan, right? There are other cloners out there, but most wouldn’t be willing to take such severe steps without more questions answered. So, we take it out of the picture.”

Obi-Wan had been skeptical. “We’re not hiring them to clone our own army first, Nield.”

That had earned him one of the rare and pretentious head shakes that showed Nield was Very Disappointed in him. “No, but our historians have been finding all sorts of plants and animals that the wars have cost our planet. We have some scientists run the numbers, see which ones would be safe to reintroduce….”

“And clone some extinct species back into existence,” Obi-Wan concluded, resting his chin on his hand as he thought it through. “It won’t be the major contract the army was, but it will be enough to give us a relationship and a reason to keep visiting.”

“So if the Sith try anything, you’ll know.”

***

Obi-Wan had never actually found out to what extent the Kaminoans had _truly_ known about Sidious’ plans. They’d known about the chips in each trooper’s brain, they’d known about Tyranus...but beyond that, he couldn’t be sure. It seemed unusual for them to allow their planet to be such a target during and after the war, if they had been fully in league.

But he wouldn’t put it past some of them nor would it be surprising that Sidious might have stabbed an ally in the back after becoming Emperor.

He wasn’t there to judge the present day Kaminoans, though. Their culture was a rancid thing based on eugenics, yet, they were arguably less cruel than many other civilizations (than the Elders of Melida-Daan had been, even). And what they were doing _could_ be put to good purposes.

Like cloning two dozen now-extinct animals and twice as many plants back into existence for Melida-Daan. Ones that, with the reclamation of land from barren battlefields, might thrive once more on their planet.

It would be a long-term contract, as numbers and kinds would be a careful balancing act across generations, and one that could prove bountiful for Kamino if it worked well and convinced other planets to follow suit.

As far as they knew, it was nothing but a good business deal.


	28. Chapter 28

Life in the galaxy moved on, no matter what drastic changes happened in certain systems or sectors. 

On Melida-Daan, their agriculture was starting to support the booming population and the cities were ever expanding to make room. The spaceport was crowded and always busy, now with imports _and_ exports, and people were actually just coming to visit--to see the art exhibitions, the free concerts in the Peace Park, or simply to try the new culinary experiments they were becoming known for in the foodie sections of the HoloNet.

Obi-Wan, Nield, and Cerasi had, on their own, overseen enough marriages to last them a lifetime. And, on occasion, had to help out with a few births, as well.

In the other timeline, these were things that Melida/Daan had never really had--Nield hadn’t been a bad leader, but he’d been largely unsupported and the Republic had offered few resources. Decades after Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had helped the Elders and Young in creating a treaty, it had still just been a poor, struggling Outer Rim planet.

He didn’t tell the others that, but he thought they’d figured it out, if from nothing else than how amazed he felt over their bond at times. Obi-Wan could only hope that when he stopped the Sith plot, the changes were as clear, as beneficial to the people.

***

The Harvest Festival was Mawat’s idea. They’d given the Scavenger Youth leader responsibility over the lands he and his people used to prowl and he’d taken to it with a fierce determination to prove himself. 

Some part of Obi-Wan would always distrust him, even if they were settled young men and not the reckless boys they’d been. That Cerasi specifically worked with him on these projects was especially nerve-wracking, even as he could watch them interact for hours with no hostility between them, and Mawat had nothing to gain in this world by assassinating her.

No matter what, he kept his senses alert as they walked through the stalls and tables set out near a field of gourds that were in the process of being picked. They’d have pies and soups made from them for the next few weeks, even Nield not complaining about the repetition as they enjoyed their planet’s bounties.

“These are a hearty staple crop dating back about 300 years,” Mawat explained, handing them both small cups of caf mixed with the gourd’s juice and some spices. “One of the first things the cloning program sent us over. We didn’t know if the soil could still handle it, but a lot of it was surprisingly still usable--apparently burning down forests and leaving nothing but barren fields for years gives the soil a lot of time to recover.”

His anger was reflected in everyone around them, listening in on his tour. If Obi-Wan was right about the location, he thought he’d even seen this area before, covered in scrub and debris, a few rotted out, abandoned farms dotted along it.

Now it was healthy looking fields, greenhouses set up on one side, a mix of Alderaanian prefab buildings and whatever the Melida-Daan had managed to assemble. Maybe not the best looking farmland, but it was theirs.

"What sort of yields are we looking at?" 

Distracted from old anger, Mawat began listing off projections for the coming years, moving off to show them other booths. They had two more plants from the Kamino program that they were trying to grow and a few non-invasive off-world crops. 

If they were to get cut off from the rest of the galaxy for some reason (and Obi-Wan could think of dozens, though he tried not to), they wouldn't immediately starve. In another decade or two, they might even be able to cut most agricultural imports to luxury items.

Around them, children who were actually getting to be children ran after each other in some game, shouting and laughing. One bumped into Cerasi, knocking her against Obi-Wan, then was off with a muffled apology, the holocams around them catching the laughter that erupted from the adults at the simple joy of children without fear.


	29. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not subscribed to the series, and just the work, check out the 3rd entry which is a Halloween AU for ENL!

Nothing felt the same around the Temple. It had been years since Obi-Wan had vanished into civil war on Melida/Daan and Bant could _still_ see the changes, large and small, that he had caused.

Sometimes she missed him, an ache in her heart where her kind, softhearted friend had been. But when she’d gone to Master Yoda, requesting to contact him, she’d been rebuffed until...she just stopped trying.

Perhaps, that wasn’t the _only_ reason.

Everyone had thought Master Qui-Gon would be an amazing Master--he was such a renowned Jedi, he had so many accomplishments and his missions always sounded so exciting! Even after Obi-Wan returned with him after Bandomeer, with something a little broken inside, she’d still believed that.

After a few years as Qui-Gon’s Padawan, Bant knew they were all wrong.

She’d been so determined to be _better_ than Obi-Wan. She’d never abandon the Order, she’d never abandon the Master who had done her the kindness of training her. _Everyone_ had agreed Obi-wan had been wrong, after all, at least all of the other Initiates and junior Padawans she’d know at the time.

If her network had been a little wider, if there had been Knights or Masters she’d been able to talk to about it, and get honest replies from, she thought it would have been a different story-- _she’d_ say something different, now. 

She wondered if Obi-Wan had been brave to leave, or just desperate.

Bant knew she didn’t feel brave. But she was desperate.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Myself and some others have created a [Discord server for Jedi fans!](https://discord.gg/Njt5mcesx2)
> 
> I also still have [my own server](https://discord.gg/W3BUsdT) for discussing my fics, Odious, Alpha-17, and many other things.

The New Mandalorians had been in charge of Mandalore for centuries. During that time they made it very clear they were different from the traditional Mandalorians, that they were not the “wrong” sort that the Republic had tried to pre-emptively exterminate. And, with the Republic’s backing, they held onto not just the planet of Mandalore, but much of the Sector.

Until Obi-Wan had asked Jango Fett, the Mand’alor of the True Mandalorians and many of the traditionalists, to assist with the Stark Hyperspace War. He saved multiple Jedi, a Senator, a Minister of the Trade Federation, and the Republic a great deal of embarrassment.

And suddenly the Senate wasn’t so sure the New Mandalorians _were_ their best choice.

***

Obi-Wan hadn’t meant for that to happen. He wanted Mandalore to change (had seen the horrible fate that the New Mandalorian policies and the mayhem from the extremist traditionalists would lead to), but not like this. A carefully controlled change with Mandalorians had perhaps been more fantasy than a possible reality.

Jango Fett was tearing through the sector not with violence, but with righteousness: Removing outside corporate interests who were taking advantage of loose New Mandalorian regulations, destroying pirates foolish enough to still be active there, handing out the medical aid that Melida-Daan had helped him collect.

The New Mandalorians had no recourse. They tried calling upon the Republic for assistance to put down the “insurgency” and instead were told it was an “internal matter” they needed to solve on their own.

So they did the only thing they could think of doing--they called for talks. 

And Jango, being Jango, invited Obi-Wan.

***

In another life, his first visit to Mandalore had been to observe an election alongside his Jedi Master. Duchess Satine Kryze, the daughter of a respected traditionalist who had joined the New Mandalorian movement, had won, everything seemed settled. And then Death Watch had rained chaos down on the Sector for nearly a year.

On the run with her, he’d learned everything he could about Mandalore and its cultures to survive. All the while, Satine had been shedding her father’s heritage, to emerge as purely New Mandalorian as she could. In a way, Death Watch had already won, decades before they killed her.

Death Watch wasn’t as strong now, not with Jango offering another path to the traditionalists. Somehow, though, Obi-Wan still had a bad feeling about it.

***

He was greeted by Jango and a retinue as soon as he landed, his own people fanning out around him in the security formation they’d learned from the True Mandalorians. They were wearing armor, but he’d chosen not to wear his own, arriving as a diplomat might in the traditional clothing and jewelry that had been made for him.

Jango looked healthy, though tired, and there was a fire in his eyes that Obi-Wan could barely recognize. Triumph, he thought, a sign that Jango thought he was about to have everything he wanted.

“Thank you for coming, Archon.” His tone was stiff in his attempt to be formal.

“It is my honor to be an observer to these historic talks, Mand’alor,” Obi-Wan returned, with a teasing note, then, more softly once he’d closed the distance, “Truly, Jango, I’m excited to see how this goes.”

Jango relaxed at the informal aside, giving him a smile before starting the introductions. Most he already knew, such as Duke Kryze, but there were many he hadn’t yet met in person, including Jango’s second-in-command.

If Obi-Wan had ever known anything about a “Myles” in the last life, he didn’t recall it now. This life had given him an abundance of knowledge, though, in comments from Jango, in reports from Mandalore.

He’d led the small group of True Mandalorians on Galidraan. He and many of the others had survived, but been seriously injured. His hatred of the Jedi was well-known and often picked up by the other Mandalorians once they heard his story, even without the wholesale slaughter that Galidraan _could_ have been (Obi-Wan was the only one who had anything to compare it to, after all).

Even now, knowing that Obi-Wan was a _former_ Jedi (and had only been apprenticed for a year, at that) favored by his Mand’alor, Myles was uneasy around him. It stunk in the Force, pushing against Obi-Wan as he did his best to seem as un-Jedi-like as he could.

Right after Myles was the New Mandalorian representatives and if Obi-Wan’s smile had started feeling strained before, he was left hoping it didn’t look outright fake towards them.

From the hints of Jango’s amusement he felt Obi-Wan imagined he was failing.

***

“You’ve done well,” was the first thing Jango said when they were alone, clapping Obi-Wan on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble.

“You’ve been keeping track of my exploits?”

He scoffed as he moved away to start pouring the two of them a drink. “The entire galaxy has been and you know it.”

Obi-Wan smirked, eyes bright. “Ah, is that jealousy? I have a _whole_ sector already.”

Jango shoved the glass of tihaar at him--the scent of the alcohol so sharp it made Obi-Wan’s nose burn--before slumping into a nearby chair. His long silence drew away Obi-Wan’s amusement, leaving them both serious as Jango drank in quick sips, contemplating something he wouldn’t put to words.

Before the night was out, Obi-Wan thought he had. They were stumbling towards his bedroom, Obi-Wan glad he’d finally surpassed Jango in height as he all-but carried him.

The words were muffled against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, but the old remnants of despair were clear, “It should have been Jaster.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of this might be a little familiar to members of [my discord](https://discord.gg/W3BUsdT), who were given some sneak peeks.

The attack was inevitable, for as much as everyone involved had hoped they’d taken enough measures to avoid it. The Melida-Daan had been the ones to notice, too used to all the subtle ways of “disrupting” large gatherings. In the Force, the ripple of a warning hadn’t started until nearer the time the explosions would go off, screaming in Obi-Wan’s head about the damage that would be caused.

He’d held up the building, the ground shaking around him as it reached up at his command to support more and more of the collapsing roof. On another planet, it might have been harder to manipulate, but Mandalore _wanted_ to help, bathed in too much death already.

When he finally let go, collapsing to his knees and focusing on the scene with his physical senses, there were pillars of stone and packed earth still holding up parts of the building where the walls had been blown away. The ground underneath him still seemed to rumble with power, buzzing against his palms.

They’d evacuated as he’d wrestled with the explosion and its aftermath. It had still been too late to save everyone.

***

Of the survivors, the New Mandalorian delegation was the worst off--they hadn’t been wearing armor, after all, and they didn’t keep to the sort of training that most of the other Mandalorians present had. It was a bad showing, when part of Jango’s campaign included protection for those who didn’t want to protect themselves.

The True Mandalorians and the unaffiliated clans were raging at each other, not so much in blame, but because there was a divide over who wanted to immediately go after Death Watch and who wanted to dig in and increase defenses. They did not care much for Obi-Wan’s opinions, as an outsider, and so he could only watch.

This was the first time Obi-Wan had looked at Jango and seen Alpha-17. 

Alpha-17 who had been trained by the broken, stripped bare Jango who survived Galidraan, who had no need for pretenses to hide he was a cold blooded killer.

It wasn’t what a leader of an honorable people--a Mand’alor--showed to the world, no matter how much of it might reside within him. It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing one showed child soldiers trying to fix a broken planet and culture. 

But what he saw now, this was the casual disregard for the lives of their enemies that had often been the sticking point between him and Alpha-17. A reminder and a warning.

***

Good news, of a kind, kept coming in from Melida-Daan, bolstering Obi-Wan’s spirits. He thought of cutting his trip short, of returning there to help with all of the changes and requests, the new refugees and the diplomatic overtures. Yet, he couldn’t abandon Mandalore. Not again. 

The guilt of knowing its fate in the last lifetime, of what the Empire had done to it, still hung over him.

If this was the start of the civil war that he’d once survived himself, he wasn’t going to stand idly by and allow Mandalore to be mired in that chaos. A strong Mandalore was too important to his goals.

***

“Death Watch wants to stop the Mand’alor from being acknowledged by the New Mandalorians,” Myles insisted to the representatives, when they next managed to meet. “If you put the talks on hold, you’ll be giving them what they want. You’ll show them that the violence they commit works.”

It was heavy-handed, but Obi-Wan could see the logic behind the argument. The New Mandalorians were breaking away to confer with each other soon after, Myles’ words seemingly working on them.

Jango leaned towards Obi-Wan, having given him a seat of honor next to him. “Vizsla may have done us a favor,” he muttered, watching the New Mandalorians. “They were going to refuse to cooperate.”

There was nothing surprising about Jango having enough spies to know that, but there was a suggestion underlying his words that caught Obi-Wan off-guard. If this had been the Jango Fett of the last lifetime, Obi-Wan’ would have suspected he’d planned everything to result in the Death Watch attack. 

But this wasn’t, he reminded himself. He’d made sure that Jango Fett would never exist.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I can't believe it's 2021 already. I hope everyone has a boring, uneventful year!
> 
> Reminder that you can find me on my discord, [Cursed Content](https://discord.gg/W3BUsdT)!

Reunions were difficult to classify, now. There was a time where all Obi-Wan could have wanted was to see old, familiar faces. Now he was afraid he had grown too far away from what they knew of him, that he was a stranger standing in place of their friend.

It did not stop him from striding forward as soon as he saw Bant, sweeping her into his arms. She held him back just as tightly, her cool skin and still familiar Force presence taking him back, years and decades before, to the creche they'd grown up in together.

She'd been his best friend, once. A friendship that had slowly withered away as he was dragged across the galaxy by a Master who rarely took breaks and then had to take care of a Padawan who had been far too old for a traditional Jedi apprenticeship.

Once he'd thought if he had to do it all again, he'd try harder to retain who he'd been as an Initiate and Padawan. Now he knew that was a lie.

"Nield said you're settled in an apartment?" 

She pulled away, nodding, awkward. "Yes, I said I'd be fine with whatever barracks or dorms there were, but he...insisted."

"Any communal living on Melida-Daan is because the people want it, it's not some...punishment." Though, remembering his experience leaving the Order, he wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to be punished somehow.

She flushed, cheeks darkening. "I just don't want to take up too many resources. I know you're still building."

Obi-Wan took her arm in his and gave her a tug, starting away from the space port. The walk was a long, boring one, but he thought it would do him some good. Mandalore, despite having had more time and resources to fix their own wartorn environment, still relied heavily on domed areas, and he wanted to take in the openness that his homeworld offered in contrast.

"You are not a bother, you are not a waste. I know it's hard, leaving the Order, our educations aren't exactly suited to normal life. But there's plenty of people here who are experiencing similar issues. We’ve been working on addressing it with the freed slaves that have settled in the sector, for example"

"I--we weren't _slaves_!"

"No, and I'm not saying we were, but we were trained for highly specific fields from a very young age. We didn't have the general education that many get. Like slaves, and others. And so Melida-Daan implemented education and training that people can experiment with and take at their own pace."

She frowned, still unsettled at the comparison that he possibly could have made in a gentler manner. He blamed his time among the Mandalorians for that, as well, or perhaps it was his time with Jango, whose bluntness might be rubbing off on him.

"But what about credits? How can I earn them to pay for my apartment? And food? And other things?"

Here, Obi-Wan knew, was an issue not of a Jedi, but of someone raised on Coruscant. "Every citizen and permanent resident received a weekly stipend. There is no rent, no landlords. Housing will only ever cost something if you decide you want to buy something better." While she seemed to search for a way to word what questions she had, he continued, "Every being has worth, even if it's in helping their classmates or playing with the children in the square. Our planetary income is more than large enough, at this point, to support our population, and most of us don't take any sort of wages for our work. But if you feel you must have a task, you can assist in the courses for Force sensitives."

"This is...that's like the Order, is that where you got the idea?"

"No, and don't suggest that to Nield." He chuckled, imagining his face. "The Order controls a Jedi's funds, because we're supposed to live very simple lives and most of what we need money for relates to missions, which have budgets of their own. Here, you receive funds regardless, and you can spend or save as you wish. If you want to save for a ship and leave in a few years, you can. If you want to buy a plot of land and build a house, you can."

Again, she seemed confused, but he knew that was only natural. Eventually she'd understand, and hopefully appreciate, the system they'd worked out. And if she didn't, if she never adjusted...there was Naboo, or Alderaan, or a dozen other worlds he could help her experience, instead.

***  
When they reached the city, they parted ways, Bant off to the education office he directed her to, and Obi-Wan straight to Nield’s office. Despite the hour growing late, he was still there, slumped over his desk and piles of flimsywork.

“If you’re going to leave us for a datapad, you could at least tell us to our face,” Obi-Wan teased, draping himself over the back of Nield’s chair and resting his chin on top of his head. 

Nield jabbed his elbow backwards, though not near enough to Obi-Wan to hit him, even though he was more than skilled enough at self-defense for that. “I’d let _Cerasi_ down easy. You, I might send back to Fett as a payment for a few decades of security.”

“I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about.”

He didn’t have to see Nield’s smirk to know it was there. “If you think I don’t have spies in your entourage, you’re losing your touch.”

“Spies filling your head with gossip,” he scoffed, wondering if he needed to start growing a beard to hide his blushing. “The people would revolt if you got rid of me. Who are they going to use for their fashion experiments?"

The laugh he received buoyed him and the good humor finally seemed to drag the rest of Nield's attention away from his work. He pushed back the chair, making Obi-Wan scramble to get out of the way, and stood, offering his arm. 

"Let's get home, before you give them any more ideas."


End file.
